CodeVerity

Icovia Listed as Top Ten DIY Site

timweaver — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:46:22 GMT

This is pretty cool. The timesonline has ranked Icovia #2 in their top ten DIY sites. Now, if someone can explain to me what “… a doodle to use.” means?

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6487470.ece

NHibernate Collections: Fighting the Good Fight and Losing

timweaver — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:56:26 GMT

I recently had a problem where I needed to represent a collection of Folders, where each Folder could have items or additional folders. I needed to store this representation in our database, however I also needed to be able to easily manipulate individual items within the collection so storing everything as a single entity (say XML) was out of the question.

I created a set of Classes: Folder.cs and FolderItem.cs

I created the below mapping documents :

Folder

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"

namespace="Domain.Core"

default-access="field.camelcase-underscore"

</id>

<one-to-many class="Domain.Core.FolderItem, Domain" />

</set>

</class>

</hibernate-mapping>

FolderItem

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"

default-access="field.camelcase-underscore"

namespace="Domain.Core"

</id>

<many-to-one name="Folder" class=" Domain.Core.Folder, Domain" column="folderId"/>

<many-to-one name="Detail"

class="Domain.Core.Detail, Domain"

unique="true"

column="detailID"

cascade="none"/>

</class>

</hibernate-mapping>

Essentially I’ve got a Unit of Work pattern setup where the Session is created via an HTTPModule at Begin_Request and closed at End_Request.

Loading the collections worked as expected, but saving changes was another story.

Since the data itself was represented as XML I had to convert on the fly from XML back to the collection. The sticky part is that the XML hierarchy could be changed at will by the end user (e.g. Drag and Drop) and the returned XML could not be relied upon to have the correct Parent->Child IDs. That meant I had to rebuild the relationship by comparing the current collection to the XML and updating the current accordingly.

A folder could be in one folder collection and have to move to another folder collection due to end user changes.

In addition to moving folder to folder, each item had to retain its current sort position. I ran into an interesting issue where, when I mapped a Sort column, there were scenarios where I knew I had N number of items in my collection, but N-1 would come out of NHibernate. The problem was that when adding a new item to the DB I would set the sortID to –1. NHibernate considered these items with duplicate sortID values to be identical and only returned one of them. I of course, missed that small tidbit in the NHibernate docs, and spent a good hour trying to figure out why occasionally things stopped working as expected.

Back to Folders…

When I found a Folder that didn’t have the correct Parent (e.g. it was moved) I updated the Folder in my Folder collection to have the correct parentID (and any other changes) and then updated the other side of the collection, the FolderItem collection so that it was also pointed at the correct record. Check out collections in the NHibernate docs if this doesn’t make sense. Essentially the <one-to-many class="Domain.Core.FolderItem, Domain" /> and the <many-to-one name="Folder" class=" Domain.Core.Folder, Domain" column="folderId"/> need to be kept in sync. That worked great for one change, but if I had multiple only the 1st would ever persist. NHibernate would insist that no other changes took place.

Frustrated, I tried actually removing the changed item from the collection and forcing a commit(), then adding it back into the collection(s). This still only worked for one item. I suspect that had I created a new ISession, forced a commit() and then tried the update on a second ISession this strategy might have worked, but the potential for major performance issues with that approach ruled it out. After spending what seemed like 3 – 4x the amount of time it would have taken me to roll my own persistence layer I gave up and flattened my hierarchy. My DB structure is now not in 3rd normal form, however I gain far fewer reads and writes and my collection manipulation logic got much easier to deal with.

Now I only have a folder.cs class and a folder.cs mapping that looks something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"

namespace="Domain.Core"

default-access="field.camelcase-underscore"

</id>

<many-to-one name="Detail"

class="Domain.Core.Detail, Domain"

unique="true"

column="detailID"

cascade="none"/>

</class>

</hibernate-mapping>

I constantly see value in NHIbernate, but I continue to struggle to achieve the productivity gains I know are there. Karl over at CodeBetter.com echoes some of my frustrations with NHibenate here. Like he said, NHibernate is solving a seriously complex problem and as such, it is a complex beast. Sometimes, getting things done, out-weighs getting things done the “correct” way. When that happens NHibernate gives you the tools to circumvent its more complex pieces and just do what you need.

Compile Flex 3 Application From Command Line

timweaver — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:23:52 GMT

Last week I embarked on a quest to get our application(s) to compile via Jet Brains Team City. In order to do that, the applications must be compiled from command-line. Technically, I could have installed Flex 3 Builder on the build machine, but I don’t consider that a real option.

I took an inventory of my other options: ANT, NANT, Batch file, etc., and decided that while ANT is probably the technically correct approach, it wasn’t something I wanted to get into. I am fairly proficient with NANT so NANT + Command-line was the obvious choice.

The 1st step was getting the build to work via command-line. In order to do that I needed to get a command-line representation of the project so I know what to compile. Flex 3 Builder gives you this ability via the project properties:

Your Project->Properties->Flex Compiler: In the Additional Compiler Options text box you can put the –dump-config value with the name of the file you want:

When I build the above project I get a file: plannerclient-config.xml

The next step is to call the compiler and pass it the config file. In my case, I was not using modules so the only compiler I need is mxmlc.exe. This file is in the Flex 3 SDK directory. Make sure you set the Flex 3 \ bin directory in your path.

To compile my project I ran:

mxmlc -load-config plannerclient-config.xml myproject.mxml -output bin/myproject.swf

Unfortunately this didn’t work. The compiler threw multiple errors for various issues; most due to inability to resolve class references. I spent considerable amount of time trying to resolve the reference issues and finally decided it wasn’t worth it.

David Burger posted a very similar method to what I’ve detailed above, but instead of using the –dump-config option, you take the default flex-config.xml and modify it with the correct names and paths for your project. Then pass this config file into the command-line compiler:

copy the flex-config.xml from the flex SDK's frameworks directory into the root of your project
edit the flex-config.xml in your project, prepending ${flexlib}/ to all the libs/ paths and before the path references to manifest.xml and locale/
edit the flex-config.xml in your project, uncommenting the source-path element and setting its path-element element to src

Once I setup my project, which was simply copying the appropriate values from my plannerclient-config.xml to my copy of flex-config.xml the build worked.

Hooking it up to Team City and triggering the build on a SVN check-in only took a few minutes. Now on each check-in I get two builds: one with framework RSL’s and one without.

Hosts File Utility Part III

timweaver — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:07:49 GMT

In part II here I showed the unit tests for my host file utility. I will note that this is not “best practices” code. It is simply a quick utility that has more than paid for itself in time saved.

I have one outstanding bug/feature. When you attempt to uncomment something: hostu –u 127.0.0.1 www.codeverity.com if the host entry in question doesn’t exist the utility doesn’t give you any feedback that the requested action failed. There is no way to know where you are pointed without following up the above with: hostu –l www.codeverity.com.

The project structure looks like this:

HostEntries:

public class HostEntries
    {
        private IList<HostEntry> _hosts = new List<HostEntry>();
        public HostEntries()
        {
            ReadHostsFile();
        }
        private void ReadHostsFile()
        {
            var path = FindHostFile();
            using(var reader = new StreamReader(path))
            {
                while (!reader.EndOfStream)
                {
                    var entry = new HostEntry(reader.ReadLine());
                    _hosts.Add(entry);
                }
            }
        }
        public void WriteHostEntries()
        {
            var path = FindHostFile();
 
            var sb = new StringBuilder();
            foreach (var host in _hosts)
            {
                sb.Append(host.WriteLine(true));
                sb.Append(Environment.NewLine);
            }
            using (var writer = new StreamWriter(path, false))
            {
 
                writer.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
                writer.Flush();
            }  
 
 
        }
        public int EntryCount
        {
            get { return _hosts.Count; }
        }
        public IList<HostEntry> HostEntrys
        {
            get { return _hosts;}
        }
        private static string FindHostFile()
        {
            var tempPath = Environment.SystemDirectory;
            tempPath += "\\drivers\\etc\\hosts";
            return tempPath;
        }
    }

HostEntry:

public class HostEntry
    {
        private bool _isCommented = false;
        private string _ipAddress;
        private string _domain;
 
 
        public HostEntry(string entry)
        {
            ReadHostEntry(entry);
        }
        public string WriteLine(bool includeCommented)
        {
            if(includeCommented && IsCommented )
            {
                return string.Format("{0}{1} {2}","#", IPAddress, Domain );
            }
 
            return string.Format("{0} {1}", IPAddress, Domain);
        }
        private void ReadHostEntry(string entry)
        {
            var items = entry.Trim().Split('\t', ' ');
            foreach (var item in items)
            {
                if (IsComment(item))
                {
                    IsCommented = true;
                    if (item.Length > 1)
                        SetHostEntry(item.Substring(1));
 
                }
                SetHostEntry(item);
            }
        }
 
        private void SetHostEntry(string item)
        {
            if (IsIPParam(item))
            {
                _ipAddress = item;
 
            }
            else
            {
                _domain = item;
 
            }
        }
 
        private bool IsComment(string item)
        {
            if(item.Length == 1 && item =="#")
                return true;
            if(item.IndexOf('#')==0)
                return true;
 
            return false;
        }
        public bool IsCommented
        {
            get { return _isCommented; }
            set { _isCommented = value; }
        }
        public string IPAddress
        {
            get { return _ipAddress; }
            private set { _ipAddress = value;}
        }
        public string Domain
        {
            get { return _domain; }
            private set { _domain = value;}
        }
 
 
        public static bool IsIPParam(string param)
        {
            var testString = param.Split('.')[0];
            var ipTemp = 0;
            return Int32.TryParse(testString, out ipTemp);
        }
    }

HostEntryParam:

public class HostEntryParam
    {
        private string _matchString;
        public HostEntryParam(string hostParam)
        {
            CreateMatchString(hostParam);
        }
        public string MatchString
        {
            get { return _matchString; }
            private set { _matchString = value; }
        }
        private void CreateMatchString(string hostParam)
        {
            //IP or domain
            if(hostParam.Length<4)
            {
                throw new ArgumentException("supplied param is not an IP address or domain name: " + hostParam);
            }
            if(HostEntry.IsIPParam(hostParam))
            {
                BuildIPMask(hostParam);
            }
            else
            {
                BuildDomainMask(hostParam);
            }
        }
 
        private  void BuildDomainMask(string param)
        {
            _matchString = param;
        }
 
        private  void BuildIPMask(string param)
        {
            var items = param.Split(".".ToCharArray(0,1));
            _matchString = items[0];
            for(var i =1;i<items.Length;i++)
            {
                _matchString += ".";
                if (items[i] != null)
                {
                    _matchString += items[i];
 
                }
                else
                {
                    _matchString += "*";
                }
            }
            _matchString = AddTrailingDot(_matchString);
 
        }
 
 
        public bool IsMatch(string testString)
        {
            testString = AddTrailingDot(testString);
            if(testString.IndexOf(_matchString)>=0)
                return true;
 
           return false;
        }
 
        private string AddTrailingDot(string testString)
        {
            if (testString.Split('.').Length!=4 &&   testString.LastIndexOf(".") < testString.Length + 1)
            {
                testString += ".";
            }
            return testString;
        }
    }

HostProcessor:

public class HostProcessor
    {
        private HostEntries _hostEntries;
        private Params _hostParams;
        private IList<HostEntryParam> _hostEntryParams;
 
        public HostProcessor(Params hostParams, HostEntries hostEntries, IList<HostEntryParam> hostEntryParams)
        {
            _hostEntries = hostEntries;
            _hostParams = hostParams;
            _hostEntryParams = hostEntryParams;
 
        }
        public void ProcessAction()
        {
            Params.HostsAction current = _hostParams.CurrentAction;
            switch(current)
            {
                case Params.HostsAction.ShowHelp:
                    Console.WriteLine(String.Format(" {0} HostU Help *************************** {0} {0} Help -h {0} List -l {0} CommentOut -c {0} Uncomment -u {0} Add -a 127.0.0.1 www.codeverity.com {0} {0} IPAddress and domain partial matching:{0} 127.0 or 127.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 {0} or www.code or www.codeverity or www.codeverity.com", Environment.NewLine));
                    Console.WriteLine(String.Format(" {0}{0} Samples {0} -l www.codeverity.com {0} -l 127.0 {0} -l 127.0.0.1 www.codeverity.com {0} -l 127.0 www.code {0} partial matching applies to comment and uncomment as well. {0} Add requires full IP and domain", Environment.NewLine));
                    break;
                case Params.HostsAction.List:
                    ListCurrentEntries();
                    break;
                case Params.HostsAction.CommentOut:
                    CommentOutMatchingEntries();
                    WriteEntries();
                    break;
                case Params.HostsAction.Add:
                    AddNewEntry();
                    WriteEntries();
                    break;
                case Params.HostsAction.Uncomment:
                    UncommentMatchingEntries();
                    WriteEntries();
                    break;
                default:
                    ListCurrentEntries();
                    break;
 
            }
 
        }
        private void WriteEntries()
        {
            _hostEntries.WriteHostEntries();
        }
        private void UncommentMatchingEntries()
        {
            foreach (HostEntry entry in _hostEntries.HostEntrys)
            {
                if (_hostEntryParams[0].IsMatch(entry.WriteLine(true)) && _hostEntryParams.Count == 1)
                {
                    entry.IsCommented=false;
                    continue;
                }
                if (_hostEntryParams[0].IsMatch(entry.WriteLine(true)) && _hostEntryParams.Count == 2)
                {
                    entry.IsCommented = false;
                    continue;
                }
            }
 
        }
 
        private void AddNewEntry()
        {
            if(_hostEntryParams.Count!=2)
            {
                throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("Can not add an entry unless the full domain and IP address is given. Only param found was: " + _hostEntryParams[0].MatchString);
            }
            var entry = new HostEntry(_hostEntryParams[0].MatchString + "\t" +  _hostEntryParams[1].MatchString);
            _hostEntries.HostEntrys.Add(entry);
 
        }
 
        private void CommentOutMatchingEntries()
        {
            foreach (HostEntry entry in _hostEntries.HostEntrys)
            {
                if (_hostEntryParams[0].IsMatch(entry.WriteLine(false)) && _hostEntryParams.Count == 1)
                {
                    entry.IsCommented = true;
                    continue;
                }
                if (_hostEntryParams[0].IsMatch(entry.WriteLine(false)) && _hostEntryParams.Count == 2)
                {
                    entry.IsCommented = true;
                    continue;
                }
            } 
        }
 
        private void ListCurrentEntries()
        {
            foreach(HostEntry entry in _hostEntries.HostEntrys)
            {
                if (_hostEntryParams.Count > 0)
                {
                    if (_hostEntryParams[0].IsMatch(entry.WriteLine(true)) && _hostEntryParams.Count == 1)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine(entry.WriteLine(true));
                        continue;
                    }
                    if (_hostEntryParams[0].IsMatch(entry.WriteLine(true )) && _hostEntryParams.Count == 2)
                    {
                        if (_hostEntryParams[1].IsMatch(entry.WriteLine(false)))
                        {
                            Console.WriteLine(entry.WriteLine(true));
                        }
                        continue;
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(entry.WriteLine(true));
                }
            }
        }
    }

Params:

   public class Params
    {
        public enum HostsAction
        {
            Add = 0,
            List = 1,
            Uncomment = 2,
            CommentOut = 3,
            ShowHelp = 4
 
        }
        private int _count;
        private const int FirstParam = 0;
        private const int SecondParam = 1;
        private const int ThirdParam = 2;
        private List<HostEntryParam> _hostEntryParams = new List<HostEntryParam>();
        public Params(string [] hostparams)
        {
            Count = hostparams.Count();
            if(Count>3)
            {
                throw new ArgumentException(String.Format("App was supplied {0} arguments. Only 3 are supported" , Count));
            }
            var paramValue = "-l";
            if(Count>0)
            {
               paramValue =  hostparams[FirstParam];
            }
            switch(paramValue)
            {
                case "-a":
                    CurrentAction = HostsAction.Add;
                    break;
                case "-l":
                    CurrentAction = HostsAction.List;
                    break;
                case "-u":
                    CurrentAction = HostsAction.Uncomment;
                    break;
                case "-c":
                    CurrentAction = HostsAction.CommentOut;
                    break;
                case "-h":
                    CurrentAction = HostsAction.ShowHelp;
                    break;
                default:
                    CurrentAction = HostsAction.List;
                    break;
            }
            if (Count > 1)
            {
                var hostEntry = new HostEntryParam(hostparams[SecondParam]);
                _hostEntryParams.Add(hostEntry);
                HostEntryParam entryTwo = null;
                if (Count == 3)
                {
                    hostEntry = new HostEntryParam(hostparams[ThirdParam]);
                    _hostEntryParams.Add(hostEntry);
                }
            }
 
        }
 
        public HostsAction CurrentAction { get; set; }
 
        public List<HostEntryParam> HostEntryParams
        {
            get {return _hostEntryParams;}
            private set {_hostEntryParams =value; }
        }
        public int Count
        {
            get { return _count; }
            private set { _count = value; }
        }
    }

Program:

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var arguments = new Params(args);
            var hostEntries = new HostEntries();
            IList<HostEntryParam> hostEntryParams = arguments.HostEntryParams;
 
            var processor = new HostProcessor(arguments, hostEntries, hostEntryParams);
            processor.ProcessAction();
 
        }
    }

As you can see from the Program.cs code above. The Program itself does very little. The first step is to create the Params class and pass in the arguments that my static void Main(string [] args) takes in. If the count of args is greater than what is expected the app throws an exception. If, however, the args are less than 3 it simply figures out the best guess for what you wanted to do and does it. If no args are passed it is the same as calling: Hostu –l or ‘list all’. I considered outputting help, but decided that since I wrote it, and I’m the only one using it, help would be rather silly.

Next entry I’ll dig into some of the design decisions and analyze how this could have been done better.

Yet Another Customer Service Failure - Updated

timweaver — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:36:45 GMT

[updated]

We got a call today from SIGG and they simply asked us to put the bottle on the porch in the original packaging and FedEx would be by tomorrow to pick it up.

[Original]

The week before last we purchased 4 SIGG water bottles. The box showed up on Wednesday and we opened it only to find that SIGG shipped us the wrong bottle. Thankfully, it was Carol’s and not one of the kids, but still a hassle. The packing slip included directions for an RMA so Carol called the number and ask the gentleman who answered for an RMA. He wanted to know why and she told him that they shipped the wrong bottle. The packing list is correct; meaning it has the bottle we were supposed to get listed on it.

The failure comes next. Instead of giving Carol an RMA the man said:

“Let me call the shipping department and find out what happened and I will call you back.”

As a customer, who has already paid for the product, I can tell you exactly what happened: they shipped me the wrong bottle because the SKUs are too similar. I don’t care what the specifics of the situation were and I shouldn’t have to wait on my RMA for that. It is irrelevant. Needless to say we never got a call back and I still don’t have an RMA.

Ironically, just a few days after ordering our bottles we ran into someone who had one for their kids. The lady had removed the outer cover on the bottle because she said the kids couldn’t handle it. Her daughter was probably 5 so I can understand that somewhat. She also said it tended to leak. That wasn’t what we wanted to hear. We bought them specifically because we thought they would not leak. In fact, we have had numerous recommendations from friends all who reported they don’t leak. So far I’ve seen no sign of leaking. I suspect that by removing the outer lid the woman we met compromised the seal in such a way that the bottle tended to leak.

Still waiting on the RMA…

Making Sure You Know Where Your Tax Money is Spent

timweaver — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:09:12 GMT

Today I was driving to Exeter, NH to go to Loaf and Ladle restaurant with Carol. As we are heading down 101E we come up to one of those large 4’ x 6’ green reflective signs that litter the highway with essential information for drivers. This particular sign said something along the lines of: Project brought to you by the American Revitalization and Rejuvenation Act. It was full color with a logo on it.

Now, to my knowledge, every single road project in NH or anywhere else in the country is funded by taxes, ergo, my taxes and your taxes. Some nitwit in NH government apparently thought I should know and appreciate the fact that my taxes were paying for the road improvements. So, in order to make sure I knew about how the road was funded, they spent more of my tax money to create these wonderful color signs.

Who ever came up with this idea should be booted out of government immediately and forced to pay for the removal of these signs. I don’t need to be paying for redundant spending on signage, that tells me something I’m already well aware of and every single other American can and should be well aware of. This is simply taxpayer fraud.

Table-less Layouts

timweaver — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:44:23 GMT

I’ve spent the last few years driving away from the endless use of tables to define layout. Each project I’ve been on, I’ve managed to push farther and farther away. It’s been a painful, frustrating experience, but at this point I’m far better at it than I would be at using tables.

On a current project I’m looking at using an open source forum. Digging into the code, I find that not only is everything table based, but most of the tables have styles hard coded. Adding insult to injury, there is no consistency in how attributes are named, used, nor whether something is CSS based or inline.

Take a look at this mess:

You’ve got single quote, double quote and no quote. Styles are defined in the page (note this is a compiled class, not even HTML) and styles are defined in CSS. Frankly, this sucks. I’ve written some mangled code in my time, but this is a well known forum software we’re talking about. OSS projects are better; more eyeballs and all that crap, right? Yes, I know I can fix it, but of course I have neither the time, nor the motivation to rewrite something this huge.

Honestly, I blame Microsoft for the continuing prevalence of this kind of crap. The tools should prevent you from making these types of poor decisions instead of encouraging it via drag and drop and zero validation.

Hosts File Utility Part II

timweaver — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:10:24 GMT

In Part I, here, I talked about creating a utility to help me with constant host entry changes. I have to report that I used it throughout the day today and I am very pleased with how much easier it made my life. I did have one usability issue: I swapped the IP address with the Domain and the result was all IP address matches were being changed, but the domain was ignored. Once I figured out that I was doing it backwards, it worked as expected.

As with everything I write, I used Unit Tests to drive the development. My tests are rudimentary, but they did the job of making sure each class of the utility operated correctly. Once I had all the parts working, putting them together was a snap.

I will caution that some of this code is rather ugly and not what I could call “production” quality. The names of the classes are confusing at best [ how many things can you call host?]. As a general rule, I allow my unit tests to shield me from these types of things and during the second pass, post working, I refactor, rename and generally deal with the ugly stuff.

My project hierarchy

The Program.cs controls everything, the Params.cs class parses the params passed to the Program.cs and determines what action is to be taken, HostEntryParam.cs holds the parsed params (IPAddress and or Domain ), the HostEntry represents a single line in the hosts file. The HostEntries is just a utility class that holds and operates on the collection of HostEntry(s).

Param class Unit Tests

    [TestFixture]
    public class ParamTests
    {
        [Test]
        public void ParseParamsTest()
        {
            var hostParams = new Params(new string[2] {"-l", "www.codeverity.com"});
            var expectedCount= 2;
            Assert.AreEqual(expectedCount, hostParams.Count);
 
            hostParams = new Params(new string[3] { "-l", "www.codeverity.com", "127." });
            expectedCount = 3;
            Assert.AreEqual(expectedCount, hostParams.Count);
        }
        [Test]
        [ExpectedException(typeof(ArgumentException))]
        public void ParseParamsTestInvalid()
        {
            var hostParams = new Params(new string[4] { "-l", "www.test.com", "127.", "www.test2.com" });
            var expectedCount = 4;
            Assert.AreEqual(expectedCount, hostParams.Count);
        }
        [Test]
        public void ParseParamsTestInvalidDefault()
        {
            var hostParams = new Params(new string[1] { "-x" });
            var expectedCount = 1;
            Assert.AreEqual(expectedCount, hostParams.Count);
            Assert.AreEqual(hostParams.CurrentAction ,Params.HostsAction.List);
        }
    }

HostEntryParam class Unit Tests

    [TestFixture]
    public class HostEntryParamTests
    {
        [Test]
        public void HostEntryValidTest()
        {
            HostEntryParam hostParam = new HostEntryParam("127.0");
            Assert.AreEqual(true, hostParam.IsMatch("127.0.0.1"));
            hostParam = new HostEntryParam("127.");
            Assert.AreEqual(true, hostParam.IsMatch("127.0.0.1"));
            hostParam = new HostEntryParam("127.0.0");
            Assert.AreEqual(true, hostParam.IsMatch("127.0.0.1"));
            hostParam = new HostEntryParam("127.0.0.1");
            Assert.AreEqual(true, hostParam.IsMatch("127.0.0.1"));
 
        }
        [Test]
        public void HostEntryMatchStringTest()
        {
            HostEntryParam hostParam = new HostEntryParam("168.1.12");
            Assert.AreEqual("168.1.12", hostParam.MatchString);
 
            hostParam = new HostEntryParam("168.");
            Assert.AreEqual("168.", hostParam.MatchString);
 
            hostParam = new HostEntryParam("168.1.12.4");
            Assert.AreEqual("168.1.12.4", hostParam.MatchString);
        }
        [Test]
        public void HostEntryInvalidTest()
        {
            HostEntryParam hostParam = new HostEntryParam("168.1.12");
            Assert.AreEqual(false, hostParam.IsMatch("127.0.0.1"));
            Assert.AreEqual(false, hostParam.IsMatch("168.0.0.1"));
            Assert.AreEqual(false, hostParam.IsMatch("168.1.4.0"));
            Assert.AreEqual(false, hostParam.IsMatch("168.1.122.99"));
            Assert.AreEqual(false, hostParam.IsMatch("168.1.122.100"));
 
 
        }
    }
 
HostEntry class Tests
 
    [TestFixture]
    public class HostEntryTests
    {
        [Test]
        public void ReadHostEntryTest()
        {
            HostEntry entry = new HostEntry("#192.11.2.1 www.codeverity.com  ");
            Assert.AreEqual(true, entry.IsCommented);
            Assert.AreEqual("192.11.2.1", entry.IPAddress);
            Assert.AreEqual("www.codeverity.com", entry.Domain);
 
            entry = new HostEntry("#192.11.2.1 www.codeverity.com  ");
            Assert.AreEqual(true, entry.IsCommented);
            Assert.AreEqual("192.11.2.1", entry.IPAddress);
            Assert.AreEqual("www.codeverity.com", entry.Domain);
 
            entry = new HostEntry("  192.11.2.1    www.codeverity.com     ");
            Assert.AreEqual(false, entry.IsCommented);
            Assert.AreEqual("192.11.2.1", entry.IPAddress);
            Assert.AreEqual("www.codeverity.com", entry.Domain);
 
            entry = new HostEntry("192.11.2.1 www.codeverity.com");
            Assert.AreEqual(false, entry.IsCommented);
            Assert.AreEqual("192.11.2.1", entry.IPAddress);
            Assert.AreEqual("www.codeverity.com", entry.Domain);
 
 
        }
    }

HostProcessor class Tests

    [TestFixture]
    public class HostProcessorTests
    {
        [Test]
        public void HostProcessorActionTest()
        {
            var hostParams = new Params(new string[]{"-l","127.0"});
            var hostEntries = new HostEntries();
            IList<HostEntryParam> hostEntryParams = hostParams.HostEntryParams;
 
            var processor = new HostProcessor(hostParams, hostEntries, hostEntryParams);
            processor.ProcessAction();
 
        }
        [Test]
        public void HostProcessorUnCommentActionTest()
        {
            var hostParams = new Params(new string[] { "-c", ”.testme.com" });
            var hostEntries = new HostEntries();
            var hostEntryParams = hostParams.HostEntryParams;
 
            var processor = new HostProcessor(hostParams, hostEntries, hostEntryParams);
            processor.ProcessAction();
        }
    }

Not much too it really, once you figure out the screwy names I used.

Next post I’ll put up the actual classes and talk about what I thought worked well and what didn’t. I also want to run NDepend on the utility to see what it says is wrong.

Things that Make You Go WTF

timweaver — Sun, 03 May 2009 16:16:17 GMT

So, recently Egypt announced that they were going to cull a large number of pigs. It was thought [ said ] that it was a direct measure against the swine flu. So, let’s follow this logic for a moment:

a) Pigs in Mexico contract flu virus from human

b) Pigs in Mexico mix a new flu cocktail and the new flu virus, tired of wallowing in the mud jumped back to somewhat cleaner human host

c) Human shares new flu virus with friends and family who quickly spread it around the world

What about that lowly pig? When was the last time you saw a swine jet setting around the world? I’ve seen a lot of people who could be mistaken for a pig on planes, but never a real pig.

Now, back to Egypt. It naturally follows that the pigs in Egypt were exposed to the jet setting Mexican pig [I bet he had a big sombrero on] after all they are probably friends…

So Egypt is going to kill off 1/2 of a million pigs. At which point, someone is going to say: “Hey, we need more pigs.” Then someone will go get some pigs from somewhere else. Why aren’t the new pigs exposed to the virus? It’s just stupid. Maybe they can vaccinate the pigs?

But wait, it gets better. Apparently the Egyptian government has determined that they were not being all that intelligent, so instead of culling pigs for the swine flu, they are culling pigs because they are being raised in a disorderly manor - http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/148430.php

Damn you pigs! Next time you will stand in line like the swine you are and not make so much noise!

Hosts File Utility

timweaver — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:46:18 GMT

I hate hosts.txt. I have to modify my host entry at least 20 times a day. I have entries for production, qa, staging, and of course dev. In fact, I have around 50-100 entries in my hosts file. I try and keep it organized, but it is still a hassle. There have been many times where I thought I was pointing to one environment, but in reality I was pointing somewhere else. So, I’ve decided to create a small utility app that will help me out.

Ideally this would be a simple scripting app Monad maybe? Maybe not. I’ve decided to use a VS 2008 command line app. At some point I may consider putting an GUI front end on it, but first things first. Changing a hosts entry today isn’t all that hard:

Click on the host short-cut
Scan file for entry
Remove or add #
Save

It’s really just those four steps. Of those, only the second step is really a pain point. The other major pain point is knowing which environment I am pointed to. Today I use a number of things to determine that:

Specific item on a web page – requires me to go to a page I don’t need to render
Header on the page – requires me to inspect the headers
Scan the hosts file – requires me to visual inspect the hosts file

My command line app needs to be able to quickly tell me which environment is currently “active”. If it takes longer than the manual process, what’s the point?

So my initial requirements:

Open hosts file
Read hosts file
Save hosts file
Add new entry (IP address and host name)
Comment out entry
Uncomment entry
List currently active
List by hosts name including which one is active

The first three bullets are implicit actions that just need to happen. The last five need a closer look though.

This is a command-line utility so I need to define the parameters/flags that will be used to determine what the application will do.

Add New Entry

hostutil.exe -a 192.168.1.1 www.codeverity.com

Comment out entry

hostutil.exe –c 192.168.1.1

I have a fairly large number of IP addresses to keep track of. It would be nice if I could pass the host entry itself and a partial IP match that would comment out all host entries with the matching host name and partial match of IP address:

hostutil.exe –c 127. www.codeverity.com

All IPs for given host entry:

hostutil.exe –c www.codeverity.com

Uncomment entry

hostutil.exe –u 192.168.1.1

hostutil.exe –u 127. www.codeverity.com

All IPs for given host entry:

~~hostutil.exe –u~~ ~~www.codeverity.com~~ This wouldn’t make sense since only one entry is going to be used.

List Currently Active

hostutil.exe –l

hostutil.exe –l www.codeverity.com

hostutil.exe –l 127. www.codeverity.com

Now I have enough to get started. I have a few more nice to have requirements, but this basic list will go a long way towards making my development life easier.

In part II I’ll put up some code.