{ Blog }

3 reasons why I love ReSharper

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:49:00 GMT

ReSharper is a renowned productivity tool developed by JetBrains that makes Microsoft Visual Studio a much better IDE. It brings smart C# code analysis, editing, highlighting and refactoring features to .NET developers. ReSharper extends much of its support to VB.NET, build scripts, ASP.NET, XML, and XAML files. All features are available in mixed solutions where different projects use .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework, Silverlight, as well as other frameworks and tools from the Visual Studio ecosystem.

I have hardly ever used an add-on with Visual Studio while using it more than decade or so. I never felt an urge to use one and always believed that Visual Studio is one of the best IDE present in the market, in fact it is. Fortunately or unfortunately, our team decided to throw away the (outdated and self-proclaimed) coding standard we were using. This led to a search to find a better tool which can help us a team in doing so. ReSharper came as one of the top search result in Google. Not sure because of relevance or as a sponsored result, but that’s a different story.

Having said so, I have been using this add-on (trail version) for almost three weeks now and simply cannot believe how I managed to do without. It is certainly addictive. Apart from all the features JetBrains has listed on their website, here are 5 reasons why I love ReSharper:

Conventions: One of the most striking and handy feature. As a developer, I don’t really have to bother and remember the naming conventions. ReSharper helps me and signals any deviation as I type my code. This means, no longer I have to create lengthy documents and indoctrinate new programmers about the conventions we use as a team.
A definite PLUS while doing code reviews. All those deviations should have already been taken care of by the developer himself and if not it will just strike through immediately while you are at it.
Code Editing Helpers: Another magical feature. I had this project where someone had written a NICE nested foreach loop. I noticed that ReSharper had few suggestions to it. It suggested that a better Linq statement can be used instead of loop. And not only has it suggested, it does it for you. Pretty handy as feature even if you want to learn new, better ways and syntax to write code.
Code Smells: This is how they market the feature. But it really works. ReSharper can tell you if there is a possible NULL reference exception. Very handy when you have a lot of junior developers working on the team. This is one of those scenarios which is most likely to happen if the developer has made an assumption on his own.

Apart from that here are my general observations:

Good:

Suggests good coding practices as we type
Good refactoring support
Supports xml files also for refactoring

Bad:
Seems to take a lot of resources

Features personally liked:
greys out unused using statements and variables in the editor
suggestions to convert string literals to constants when used with hard coded values
suggests naming conventions for namespaces, variables etc.
suggestions to change the scope of variables to inner most code block
suggestion to use object initializers
suggestions for possible exceptions in code
and a lot more

CodeProject Most Valuable Professional for 2013

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:48:00 GMT

After a painful start and a root canal treatment already in the first week of the year, something fruitful happened. Just got an email from CodeProject that I'm being nominated for Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 2013. Thanks to CodeProject and all the fellow community members for support and appreciation.

A complete list of 40 CodeProject MVPs this year is available at:

http://www.codeproject.com/script/Awards/MVPWinners.aspx

From Code Project Newsletter:
Each year we have a tradition of awarding the members who have worked the hardest, helped the most, and given their all for the community. There are two main categories: those who write articles and those who help in the forums and in Quick Answers. You, our members, vote for these articles, for their answers, you download code that's been posted, bookmark articles and "accept" an answer as the right one. Each small activity adds to the contributors points tally and at the end of the year we have a list of the brightest and the best.

A Google Doodle for my own birthday

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:20:00 GMT

That was a big surprise this morning when I logged on to my computer. Though, I haven't set Google as my home page on Internet Explorer (Yes, I still use IE :), but as a (bad) habit directly type the google.com. There was a colleague standing next to me, and after looking at Google Doodle, I told him that it looks like some great guy also happens to be born on the same date as of mine. And by the time I hovered over the Doodle, it was really a big fat surprise, Google had customised the doodle for my own birthday with alternate text 'Happy Birthday Manas!'.

Frankly, quite impressive.

Hey Google, Many thanks for remembering!!! ;)

P.S. : Dear facebook, twitter: Were you sleeping this morning or just not bothered about it?

Why you should use Visual Studio for SharePoint Development

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 07:25:00 GMT

Microsoft has significantly improved the tools available to developers and implementers for SharePoint 2010. The two primary tools, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010, have evolved into first class power user, site owner, and developer tools that target different audiences.

Microsoft SharePoint Designer is a specialized HTML editor and web design freeware for creating or modifying Microsoft SharePoint sites and web pages. It is a part of Microsoft SharePoint family of products.
SharePoint Designer features focuses on designing and customizing Microsoft SharePoint websites. For instance, it includes SharePoint-specific site templates.

Visual Studio 2010 is the primary development environment for all custom code and resource development for SharePoint 2010. Developers can also use a new project template that can rebuild a solution by importing an existing solution package (.wsp) file. Visual Studio 2010 provides a new extensibility model named the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), and a SharePoint 2010 project system API. Using this framework and API, developers can extend and customize Visual Studio 2010.

Benefits of using Visual Studio

Workflows created in Share point Designer can be exported and imported to visual studio but the other way around is not possible.
When developing solutions for SharePoint using Visual Studio, there is nothing special if you are targeting SharePoint. All of your sources files are handled as they normally are when you are using a version control system.
You can use Visual Studio to group related SharePoint elements into a Feature. Next, you can create a SharePoint solution package (.wsp) to bundle multiple features, site definitions, assemblies, and other files into a single package, which stores the files in a format needed by SharePoint to deploy the files to the server.

References
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg512102.aspx#bk_spdevtools
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms253064.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181368.aspx

Accessing C# Variables in JavaScript

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 21:37:00 GMT

Introduction

So often I come across this question on various forums that 'How to access the variables/properties from C# in Javascript?'. And this is one of the scenarios which you are (most) likely to come across if you are writing an ASP.Net application.

For most beginners, it might get confusing as they start wondering how to pass on information from a server side variable to client side.

Solution

The one shortcut we used to used during the (good old) ASP days, and which still works in ASP.NET is to declare a public property in codebehind. Let us say we declare a string variable firstName in codebehind.

public string firstName = "Manas";
public string lastName = "Bhardwaj";

Now, we can access this in aspx page/javascript like this:

<script>
    var myName;
	function GetMyName()
    {
		myName = <%=this.firstName%> + ' ' + <%=this.lastName%>;
		
		alert(myName);
    }
</script>

To do it nicely, you can use RegisterClientScriptBlock. RegisterClientScriptBlock accepts the following parameters:
Type: The type of the client script to register.
key: The key of the client script to register.
script: The client script literal to register.
addScriptTags: A Boolean value indicating whether to add script tags.

string script = string.Format("var myName = '{0} {1}';", firstName, lastName);
if (!ClientScript.IsClientScriptBlockRegistered("myScript"))
{
    ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(typeof(_Default), "myScript", script, true);
}

Once done, the variable 'myName' is available at the client side (javascript in aspx page) and can be accessed like:

<script>
    function GetMyName()
    {
		alert(myName);
    }
</script>

Orchard : Show complete post in blog list

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:28:00 GMT

By default, most of the Orchard themes (including the default Theme Machine) shows first couple of sentences with a link 'more' to read the entire content. In the latest version of Orchard, the limit is 200 characters and after that a 'more...' link is appended. Look at the example below:

I wanted to override this setting and show the complete post in the list. Currently, I show five latest posts on my homepage. I did the following:

Add a file with name 'Parts.Common.Body.Summary.cshtml' to your themes directory.
Note : Though this feature can be centrally changed as well, but that would mean all the themes/blogs have the same setting. I would recommend to do it per theme basis.
With in this file, add the following line:
```
@Model.Html
```

And that's it. Your blog list will show complete content of your posts instead of trimming them down to certain characters.

Windows Azure : Failed to delete Storage account

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 19:50:00 GMT

I have been playing with my recently setup Windows Azure account. Nothing substantial, but have been creating and deleting VMs, websites.
But this morning I noticed that I have setup a Storage Account as well, which I did not remember setting up. After trying again and again to delete the storage, I was getting the following error:

"Storage account **************** has 1 container(s) which have an active image and/or disk artifacts. Ensure those artifacts are removed from the image repository before deleting this storage account."

After some research, I got to know that one of disks which was created with VM was still there and it needs to be deleted before removing the stuff from storage account. If you want to delete the storage account, you need to delete any images/disks you have remaining in that storage account.

Go to Virtual Machines -> "Disks" or "Images" tab -> select the images/disks that you have located in the Storage Account you want to delete -> then hit the "Delete disk" or "delete image" command. Back these up if you need before hitting the delete.

Once the images/disks in the storage account have been deleted, you should be able to delete the storage account.

Session log at TechEd 2012

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 21:22:18 GMT

Here is a list of sessions I attended in 4 days at TechEd. Must say that most of them were quite nice and well thought of. I have compiled the sessions with their respective links for online recordings.

Meet the New Windows Azure :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/FDN05
Continuous Feedback in Agile Teams :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV321
36 Terabytes: How Microsoft IT Manages SharePoint in the Enterprise :
Developing and Managing SharePoint Solutions with Microsoft Visual Studio :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/OSP231
Microsoft Office 365 for Enterprises :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/OSP221
What's New with Internet Information Services (IIS) 8: Open Web Platform for Cloud :
http://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=http%3a%2f%2fvideo.ch9.ms%2fteched%2f2012%2feu%2fWSV331.pptx
Introducing the New Visual Studio 2012 Unit Testing Experience :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV214
Building Microsoft SharePoint Online Applications in a Hybrid World :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/OSP331
Working on an Agile Team with Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012 :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV318
Exploring the Power of Page Layouts in SharePoint 2010 WCM Sites :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/OSP335
Microsoft SQL Server Data Tools: Database Development from Zero to Sixty :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DBI311
Business Intelligence and Data Visualization: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DBI206
Application Lifecycle Management: Automated Builds and Testing for SharePoint projects :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/OSP432
JavaScript: The Language :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV307
Creating and Consuming OData Services for Business Applications :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV336
What’s New in Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV331
A Modern Architecture Review: Using the New Code Review Tools :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV324
Identify & Fix Performance Problems with Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV412
JavaScript: The Developer Experience :
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/TechEd/Europe/2012/DEV308

Welcome Orchard, Sayonara BlogEngine.Net

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:08:16 GMT

After almost more than a year I am now migrating my blog to Orchard CMS from BlogEngine.Net. The decision hasn’t been that simple to made and given the fact that there was no real comparison study available, I had to spend some time to jot down the reason to convince myself about the move.
As I have mentioned earlier as well, I initially started this blog with a home grown engine to experience the whole development cycle and at the same time have some learning.
After moving to BlogEngine.Net last year, I must say that it is one of the great open source blogging platform available today. Orchard, on the other hand is new and still picking it up. But so far, it has shown the potential to be at the next level. In terms of features, both of the have more or less same capabilities.

Orchard	BlogEngine.Net
Uses the latest MVC framework.	Uses good, old ASP.NET pages.
Is really picking up the pace. Microsoft is one of the major participant in maintaining the platform.	I observed that the Release is usually prone to bugs. Not enough active support from the community.
User Interface is more structured and appealing.	Kind of OK, works and nothing great.

The shift has been really easy though. I could export my existing posts in the BlogML format from BlogEngine. Orchard does not has a built in out of the box support for it, but there is a module available which helps you to import/export the posts in BlogML format.

The Adventure called TechEd Europe 2012

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:17:00 GMT

What an adventurous week it was. Full of networking, learning, great people and some awesome parties. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was one of the delegate to Microsoft TechEd Europe 2012 at Amsterdam RAI.

It started with a fabulous keynote by Brad Anderson and Jason Zander on Azure, Widows 8, its capabilities and future. Well, did I forget to mention the guest appearance of Scott Gu?
Four days and close to 20 sessions, I can just say that I would need loads of time to just recap what I heard in TechEd 2012.

Here is my list of topics of my interest and to be followed in near future:

Windows Azure

I have the MSDN professional subscription, still need to say how much I can avail through it.

Visual Studio / Team Foundation Server 2012 : I am a big fan of Agile methodology and Microsoft Team has done quite some work to bring the great experience for developers. Especially looking for:

Planning and Capacity
Storyboarding
Intellitrace

Unit Testing enhancements: Fakes, Shims
Windows 8 : Metro Style Apps

This was just about the learning stuff, but there was this awesome party organized by Microsoft for close to 5000 delegates and staff at Amsterdam Arena Stadium. They streamed the live semi final match between Spain and Portugal. Everyone know what happened later .

The only thing which kind of sucked at the event was NO INTERNET on day 2. They had some technical failure because of which there was no internet available for almost the day.

Intergrating google-code-prettify with BlogEngine.Net

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:26:00 GMT

I was not very much satisfied with the syntax highlighting component which comes out of the box with BlogEngine.Net. And of course, being a programmer I couldn't resist myself to leave the code look ugly. After some research on internet about the various free options available for code highlighting, I zeroed onto google-code-prettify.

It is a Javascript module and CSS file that allows syntax highlighting of source code snippets in an html page.

Features

Works on HTML pages
Works even if code contains embedded links, line numbers, etc.
Simple API : include some JS&CSS and add an onload handler.
Lightweights : small download and does not block page from loading while running.
Customizable styles via CSS. See the themes gallery
Supports all C-like, Bash-like, and XML-like languages. No need to specify the language
Extensible language handlers for other languages. You can specify the language.
Widely used with good cross-browser support. Powers code.google.com and stackoverflow.com

P.S. : Dainis Graveris has compiled a nice list of all the options available. Worth while looking before you start with it. Integration with BlogEngine.NetYou can always write an extension do it in a nice way. I followed the quick and dirty way:

Add the following reference to the head of the site.master of the theme where you want to apply the changes. Ofcourse if you want to keep a local copy of the js and css files, you can do that as well.

<link href='http://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/prettify.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/> 
 
<script src='http://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/prettify.js' type='text/javascript'/>

Add the onload method on the body:

onload='prettyPrint()'

Change the text/html editor to render the correct class for the PRE tag. Change the file at editors\tiny_mce_3_4_3_1\plugins\insertcode\js\dialog.js and in the function insert, change the classname to prettyprint.

Should I use Facebook comments on my blog?

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 11:46:00 GMT

Recently, I switched to the Facebook's commenting system on my blog. The main reason/motivation to do this was:

1.) To get rid of the SPAMS. I really hate to spams, bots commenting on my blogs/articles. I could always use a captcha to minimize but doing that I create a hurdle more for my audience to post their comments. I had already enabled to review the comments before publishing them but again it takes a lot of time on my side to review each one of those before they are available. Bad idea.

2.) Ofcourse, to use the power of Facebook commenting system and to increase the traffic.

But what I observed was that doing that my visitors were kind of relucatant to use the commenting system to post the comments. And instead of using comments, I was inturn getting a lot of emails with specific questions/response.

D.Clayton has very well explained this on his blog.

I'll still stick to the current configuration. But looking at the trend and my observations, I need to plan the next steps very soon.

Will be updating soon on the outcome.

Snakes and Ladders - An attempt using HTML5

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 09:35:00 GMT

Introduction

This article is intended to demonstrate the very simple and crude implementation of Snakes and Ladders game using HTML5. Recently, I started to dig deeper into HTML5. By the time I came to canvas part, this game was one of the candidates which I wanted to try with. For those of you who have never heard of this game, here is a Wiki article about it.

Background

Though, this game is usually played as a dual player. The current implementation is a single player and is more intended to show the concepts used and the potential behind it. Before I actually start explaining the code and implementation, I would like to touch the background by explaining the HTML Canvas element which is heart of the game. I assume that everyone reading this article would have heard about HTML5 by now.

HTML5 is the successor of HTML4. HTML4 was standardized in 1997 and since then a lot has change in the internet industry. Thus, there a demand for next standardized version of HTML to improve the language and at the same time support the various multimedia blocks which have almost become regular to usage in web development. In general, HTML5 includes many syntactical features like <video>, <audio>, <canvas>, etc. We will be briefly going through Canvas element before proceeding to its usage in Snakes & Ladders game.

Canvas

Canvas as the word suggests is a new element introduced in HTML5 which can be used to draw graphics using java script. It can be used to draw shapes, images and animations. It promises to make like easier for designers, animators by standardizing (we all know the absence of flash on iPads/iPhones).

The canvas element isn't supported in some older browsers, but is supported in Firefox 1.5 and later, Opera 9 and later, newer versions of Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9.

Using the code

Well, let's walk through the code to see the use of <canvas> in developing the game.

I started with a simple HTML page which contains a <canvas> element.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>Manas Bhardwaj's Snake & Ladder</title>
</head>
<body>
    <canvas id="board" width="650" height="650">
    </canvas>
</body>
</html>

Context

The next step would be access this canvas element using java script.

var canvas = document.getElementById("board");
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");

In the first line we retrieve the canvas DOM node using the getElementById method. We can then access the drawing context using the getContext method. <canvas> creates a fixed size drawing surface that exposes one or more rendering contexts, which are used to create and manipulate the content shown. We'll focus on the 2D rendering context.

Drawing Squares

function RenderSquareBoard() 
{        
    var colorA = "white";
    var colorB = "red";

    var initRow = 1; var totalRows = 10; var initcolumn = 1; var totalColumns = 10;

    var x = 0; var y = canvas.height - squareSize;

    var columnNr = 1; var leftToRight = true;
    for (var row = initRow; row <= totalRows; row++) 
    {
        if (leftToRight) 
        {
            x = 0;
        }
        else 
        {
            x = canvas.width - squareSize;
        }

        for (var column = initcolumn; column <= totalColumns; column++) 
        {
            if (columnNr % 2 == 0) 
            {
                context.fillStyle = colorA;
            }
            else 
            {
                context.fillStyle = colorB;
            }

            context.fillRect(x, y, squareSize, squareSize);

            squares[columnNr] = x.toString() + ',' + y.toString();

            contextText.font = "15px tahoma";
            contextText.fillStyle = "black";
            contextText.fillText(columnNr, x, y + squareSize);

            var x1, y1
            if (leftToRight) 
            {
                x += squareSize;

                x1 = x + (squareSize / 2);
            }
            else 
            {
                x -= squareSize;
                x1 = x - (squareSize / 2);
            }

            y1 = y - (squareSize / 2);

            columnNr++;
        }

        y -= squareSize;
        leftToRight = !leftToRight;
    }
}

Apart from the logic how I build the different squares and keep their co-ordinates for later use to plot the player moves, the import aspect we will see here is draw a rectangle. Canvas only supports one primitive shape - rectangles. All other shapes must be created by combining one or more paths. It was at east handy for me as I did not have to do anything extra for that and could use the in-built functionality.

There are three functions that draw rectangles on the canvas:

fillRect(x,y,width,height): Draws a filled rectangle
strokeRect(x,y,width,height): Draws a rectangular outline
clearRect(x,y,width,height): Clears the specified area and makes it fully transparent.

Drawing Images

function RenderSnakeAndLadders()
{
    var img = new Image();
    img.onload = function () 
    {
    context.drawImage(img, 66, 23);
    };
    img.src = "Images/SnakeA.gif";
}

Importing images is basically a two step process. Firstly we need a reference to a JavaScript Image object or other canvas element as a source. It isn't possible to use images by simply providing a URL/path to them. Secondly we draw the image on the canvas using the drawImage function.

The GAME

I used two snakes and two ladders in my example to keep it simple. If a player falls on a ladder he climbs up the ladder and thus does not have to cover the whole path. Against this, if a player falls on Snake's mouth he slips down to the tail. On the click of a button, I generate a random number between 1 and 6. The position of the player is changed based on his score and a new rectangle is drawn to show his new location.

function nextMove() 
{
	var newMove = GenerateRandomNumber(6);
	alert("You got : " + newMove);

	_currentPos = _currentPos + newMove;

	switch (_currentPos) 
	{
	//ladder
	case 6:
	_currentPos = 46;
	break;
	//ladder
	case 39:
	_currentPos = 79;
	break;
	//snake
	case 99:
	_currentPos = 29;
	break;
	//snake
	case 72:
	_currentPos = 2;
	break;             
	}

	var coorintaes = squares[_currentPos];
	coorintaes = coorintaes.split(',');

	context.fillRect(coorintaes[0], coorintaes[1], squareSize, squareSize);

	if (_currentPos == 100)
	{
		alert("Congratulations, you have won the game :)");
		initGame();
	}
}

Extracting Table Data from Word Document using Aspose Words

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:05:00 GMT

For one my projects, I had a requirement where the data from word documents had to be extracted and exported to a database. The biggest challenge was that I had to support the existing word documents. Basically, there were thousands of word documents of same format which had chunks of data. This document format was never designed to be read by another system. This means, no bookmarks, merge fields, styles to identify the actual data from the standard instructions etc.Luckily, for our rescue all the input fields were in the table. But these tables were again of different formats, some with single row/cell and some with varying number.

I use Aspose Words extensively for creating and manipulating word documents. And considering the expertise I had with the component, I decided to go with it. To solve the issue, I created a similar table model in C# so that I can use it later on while reading the documents.

Below, you can see I created a class called WordDocumentTable with three properties i.e. TableID, RowID and ColumnID. As I explained earlier that we had no support for TableID/RowIDs, these properties simply imply the position in the word document. The start index is assumed to be 0.

public class WordDocumentTable
{ 
	public WordDocumentTable(int PiTableID) 
	{  
		MiTableID = PiTableID; 
	}

	public WordDocumentTable(int PiTableID, int PiColumnID) 
	{  
		MiTableID = PiTableID;  
		MiColumnID = PiColumnID; 
	}

	public WordDocumentTable(int PiTableID, int PiColumnID, int PiRowID) 
	{  
		MiTableID = PiTableID;  
		MiColumnID = PiColumnID;  
		MiRowID = PiRowID; 
	}

	private int MiTableID = 0;

	public int TableID 
	{  
		get { return MiTableID; }  
		set { MiTableID = value; } 
	}        

	private int MiRowID = 0;    
	public int RowID 
	{  
		get { return MiRowID; }  
		set { MiRowID = value; } 
	}

	private int MiColumnID = 0;    
	public int ColumnID 
	{  
		get { return MiColumnID; }  
		set { MiColumnID = value; } 
	}

}

Now comes the extraction part. Below, you will see the collection of table cells which I want to read from the document.

private List<WordDocumentTable> WordDocumentTables
{  
	get  
	{    
		List<WordDocumentTable> wordDocTable = new List<WordDocumentTable>();      
		//Reads the data from the first Table of the document.    
		wordDocTable.Add(new WordDocumentTable(0));      
		//Reads the data from the second table and its second column. This table has only one row .    
		wordDocTable.Add(new WordDocumentTable(1, 1));      
		//Reads the data from third table, second row and second cell.    
		wordDocTable.Add(new WordDocumentTable(2, 1, 1));  
		return wordDocTable;  
	}
}

Below is the method which extract the data from Aspose Word Document based on the Table, Row and Cell.

public void ExtractTableData(byte[] PobjData)
{          
	using (MemoryStream LobjStream = new MemoryStream(PobjData)) 
	{  
		Document LobjAsposeDocument = new Document(LobjStream);     
		foreach(WordDocumentTable wordDocTable in WordDocumentTables)  
		{   
			Aspose.Words.Tables.Table table = (Aspose.Words.Tables.Table)LobjAsposeDocument.GetChild(NodeType.Table, wordDocTable.TableID, true);   
			string cellData = table.Range.Text;

			if (wordDocTable.ColumnID > 0)   
			{    
				if (wordDocTable.RowID == 0)    
				{     
					NodeCollection LobjCells = table.GetChildNodes(NodeType.Cell, true);     
					cellData = LobjCells[wordDocTable.ColumnID].ToTxt();
				}    
				else    
				{     
					NodeCollection LobjRows = table.GetChildNodes(NodeType.Row, true);     
					cellData = ((Row)(LobjRows[wordDocTable.RowID])).Cells[wordDocTable.ColumnID].ToTxt();    
				}   
			}

			Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Data in Table {0}, Row {1}, Column {2} : {3}",           
									wordDocTable.TableID,          
									wordDocTable.RowID,          
									wordDocTable.ColumnID,          
									cellData);              
		} 
	}
}

Delete Similar Databases

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 23:24:00 GMT

Introduction

I had these similar databases on my dev environment which I had to delete multiple times during development. As this process was becoming more and more mechanical, I wanted to have a script which would do this for me.

Using the code

Below is the script which looks for the database(s) with name pattern and deletes them. I use the @DatabaseSearch variable to look for the databases with similar names.

SET NOCOUNT ON

DECLARE @DatabaseSearch nvarchar(48)
DECLARE @Sql nvarchar(max)

SET @DatabaseSearch = 'DeleteDatabasesLikeThis%'

DECLARE @DatabaseName nvarchar(48)

SELECT 
	[Name] AS [DatabaseName] 
INTO #Databases 
	FROM sys.databases 
WHERE 
	[Name] LIKE @DatabaseSearch 

DECLARE DBNameCursor CURSOR FOR SELECT DatabaseName FROM #Databases
OPEN DBNameCursor
FETCH NEXT FROM DBNameCursor INTO @DatabaseName
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
 SET @Sql = 
  'ALTER DATABASE [' + 
  @DatabaseName + 
  ']  SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE; ' +
  'DROP DATABASE [' + @DatabaseName +'];'
  
 EXEC(@Sql)
 
 FETCH NEXT FROM DBNameCursor INTO @DatabaseName
END
CLOSE DBNameCursor
DEALLOCATE DBNameCursor

DROP TABLE #Databases

Problem with Wireless Adapter or Access Point

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:07:00 GMT

After moving to a new Network Provider and of course to new Modem/Wireless Adapter (HUAWEI-HG655d), I could connect all my devices except my Windows 7 laptop.

I repeatedly received error stating that connection was not successful. After some more steps with Windows Help and Diagnostics, Windows finally said:

'Problem with Wireless Adapter or Access Point'

Now, I was like WOW. What an explanation :). Did some googling but wasn't getting anyway near to it. So decided to call the help desk from Online.nl. Though, I am usually not very optimistic of getting any help from help desks; this guy was just on spot. He asked to change the following settings and it now works like Charm :)

Mode: 802.11b/g/n -> 802.11b/g

WPA encryption: AES -> TKIP/AES

Guess what? I like Facebook LIKE :)

Tue, 29 May 2012 06:13:00 GMT

Last week has been full of news with Facebook. Be it launch of its much hyped IPO or Mark Zukerberg's marriage.

And in all this time, I managed to introduce Facebook Like button to my blog. Though there are already some extensions available for this purpose (e.g. http://dnbegallery.org/cms/List/Extensions), I decided to give it my own shot.

And guess what, it is so so simple. After doing all your personalizations here, Facebook gives you the following snippet which you can add to your page.

<div class="fb-like" data-href="http://www.google.com" data-send="true" data-width="450" data-show-faces="true"></div>

In my case (or Blog Engine), it is PostView.ascx where you need to add this. The only change you need to do is to change the 'data-href' attribute.

<div class="fb-like" data-href="<%=Post.PermaLink %>" data-send="false" data-layout="button_count" data-width="450" data-show-faces="false"></div>

This makes sure that you LIKE the correct post, otherwise hardcoded it will always like you main blog instead of post.

This actually happened with me when I introduced Google +1. One fine day, I noticed that all posts had equal recommendations. For Google +1, the attribute name is href which should be changed like this:

<g:plusone size="small" annotation="inline" href="<%=Post.PermaLink %>"></g:plusone>

SharePoint 2010 : Sandbox Development in nutshell

Tue, 29 May 2012 02:00:00 GMT

Sandbox Development

With SharePoint, the challenge has always been the balance between creating solutions and deploying them in a way that you can trust will not damage or impair the SharePoint farm.

A new feature in SharePoint 2010, called sandboxed solutions, addresses many of these concerns, enabling farm administrators to feel comfortable that the SharePoint farm is safe, giving site collection administrators the authority to manage the applications in their site collection, and providing developers with the flexibility to create solutions they know will be deployed in a safe and rapid manner.

Because sandboxed solutions cannot affect the whole server farm, they do not have to be deployed by a farm administrator. Sandboxed solutions can be deployed by a site collection administrator or, in certain situations, by a user who has the Full Control permission level at the root of the site collection.

Benefits of sandboxed solutions

The main benefits of using sandboxed solutions are as follows:

1.Sandboxed solutions can be added to a production SharePoint Server environment without the risk of affecting processes outside the sandbox.

2.Scalability and flexibility are increased because sandboxes run in a separate process that can be restricted by quotas, and their effect on the farm can be monitored.

3.A solution does not have to be modified or recompiled if it is moved from a sandbox to running directly on the farm.

Restrictions (and workarounds) on Sandboxed Solutions

The following list identifies the most common things that an assembly that will run in a sandbox cannot do:

Connect to resources that are not located on the local farm.

Access a database.

Sometimes, you may want to view and edit data from one of your core business systems. To access that data, you can use a “Hybrid Approach”. One such approach involves creating an external content type for the line of business data, then using the SPList API in the sandbox to work with that data. This is less of a workaround and more of a structured approach to working with external data in a sandboxed solution.

Change the threading model.

Call unmanaged code.

Write to disk.

You can write to SharePoint lists in a sandboxed solution. You can use a full-trust proxy with the SharePoint Logger to write to the Windows Event Log and SharePoint Unified Logging Service (ULS) logs.

Access resources in a different site collection.

Developing Visual Web Parts.

Visual Studio 2010, out of the box, does not allow you to use the visual editor to create Web Parts for a sandboxed solution. Microsoft has provided a Visual Studio 2010 Power Tool for SharePoint 2010 developers. In addition to allowing for visual editing of sandboxed Web Parts, this Power Tool provides some helpful compiler tips.

Writing Fully Coded Workflows.

You should consider using declarative workflows in a sandbox and deploying coded workflows as a farm solution when environment allows for it.

Validating Solutions in the Sandbox

The SharePoint sandbox framework provides an additional way for farm administrators to monitor and validate solutions that run in the sandbox. Farm administrators can deploy solution validators that run when a solution is uploaded to a Solution Gallery. Administrators can create validators that allow only code signed with a particular certificate to run, for example, or they can create a validator to allow only Web Parts. Another good use for validators is to log and catalog solutions in the farm as they are activated. You can see how this simple but powerful tool helps farm administrators get a handle on the solutions running in the farm.

Each solution validator is called when a solution is activated. If the validator is updated, solutions are validated again the next time they are executed.

References

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee335711.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721992.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/gg615464.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/gg615454.aspx http://www.sharepointbriefing.com/features/article.php/3930341/5-Things-You-Cannot-Do-in-a-SharePoint-2010-Sandboxed-Solution.htm

Going to TechEd 2012

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:10:00 GMT

Hi All,

I am happy to announce that I will be participating as a delegate in Microsoft TechEd 2012 in Amsterdam. Frankly, quite exicted about it. This will be my second TechEd after TechEd 2010 in Berlin.

See you all guys at Amsterdam. Below is the link for more about Tech Ed 2012.

http://europe.msteched.com

Adding Google +1 to my posts

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:43:00 GMT

I guess the bug has bitten me as well. After the very hype of Google +1 button, its time that they get some space in my blog as well.

Still in dilemma, if Facebook Like button should also be present? Well, time will only tell...