Schnieds Blog

Image Upload, Crop and Resize with ASP.NET MVC jQuery Uploadify and jCrop

2011-07-30T13:24:00.000-07:00

I need a slick way for my customers to upload, crop and resize photos within my Church Management Software. After doing some research it seems that a bunch of existing libraries and utilities need to be combined to create a functional and slick user experience for this seemingly mundane task. Specifically the platform I want to use is ASP.NET MVC (although this code will work equally well in Java with a few changes) and the best tools for uploading and cropping images seem to be Uploadify and jCrop powered by jQuery (of course.)

I found a lot of examples of each different library used in ASP.NET (and a few in MVC) but the examples where rather simplistic and didn’t really provide an elegant end to end solution tying together these great libraries. So I went ahead and created a nice ASP.NET MVC based sample application that accomplishes the following…

Uploads images with Uploadify
Stores uploaded images in Cache
Crops images using jCrop
Resizing images
All interactions handled by jQuery AJAX for a smooth UX

Uploading Images

I used a great blog post by James McCormack as the base for uploading images with Uploadify and ASP.NET MVC. Basically Uploadify is doing the heavy lifting and I just tied the onComplete event to an ASP.NET MVC Controller method.

$("#fuFileUploader").uploadify({
                'hideButton': true,       // We use a trick below to overlay a fake html upload button with this hidden flash button                         
                'wmode': 'transparent',
                'uploader': '<%= Url.Content("~/Uploadify/uploadify.swf") %>',
                'cancelImg': '<%= Url.Content("~/Uploadify/cancel.png") %>',
                'buttonText': 'Upload File',
                'script': '<%= Url.Action("FileUpload", "Media") %>',
                'multi': true,
                'auto': true,
                'fileExt': '*.jpg;*.gif;*.png;*.jpeg',
                'fileDesc' : 'Image Files',
                'scriptData': { RequireUploadifySessionSync: true, SecurityToken: UploadifyAuthCookie, SessionId: UploadifySessionId },
                'onComplete': function (event, ID, fileObj, response, data) {
                    response = $.parseJSON(response);
                    if (response.Status == 'OK') {
                        $("#pnlUpload").hide();
                        $("#pnlUploadedImage").show();
                        $("#imgUploadedImage").attr("src", imageHandler + response.Id);
                        $('#imgUploadedImage').Jcrop({
                            onChange: setCoords,
                            onSelect: setCoords
                        });
                    }
                }
            });

The controller method grabs the image that was uploaded…

public ActionResult FileUpload(MediaAssetUploadModel uploadedFileMeta)
        {
            Guid newImageId = new Guid();
            try
            {
                newImageId = ProcessUploadedImage(uploadedFileMeta);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                string errorMsg = string.Format("Error processing image: {0}", ex.Message);
                Response.StatusCode = 500;
                Response.Write(errorMsg);
                return Json(string.Empty);
            }

            return Json(new { Id = newImageId, Status = "OK" });
        }

And then processes it….

private Guid ProcessUploadedImage(MediaAssetUploadModel uploadedFileMeta)
        {
            // Get the file extension
            WorkingImageExtension = Path.GetExtension(uploadedFileMeta.Filename).ToLower();
            string[] allowedExtensions = { ".png", ".jpeg", ".jpg", ".gif" }; // Make sure it is an image that can be processed
            if (allowedExtensions.Contains(WorkingImageExtension))
            {
                WorkingImageId = Guid.NewGuid();
                Image workingImage = new Bitmap(uploadedFileMeta.fileData.InputStream);
                WorkingImage = ImageHelper.ImageToByteArray(workingImage);
            }
            else
            {
                throw new Exception("Cannot process files of this type.");
            }

            return WorkingImageId;
        }

And stores the image converted to a byte array in Cache…

#region cached properties

        private byte[] WorkingImage
        {
            get
            {
                byte[] img = null;

                if (HttpContext.Cache[WorkingImageCacheKey] != null)
                    img = (byte[])HttpContext.Cache[WorkingImageCacheKey];

                return img;
            }
            set
            {
                HttpContext.Cache.Add(WorkingImageCacheKey,
                  value,
                  null,
                  System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration,
                  new TimeSpan(0, 40, 0),
                  System.Web.Caching.CacheItemPriority.Low,
                  null);
            }
        }

        private byte[] ModifiedImage
        {
            get
            {
                byte[] img = null;
                if (HttpContext.Cache[ModifiedImageCacheKey] != null)
                    img = (byte[])HttpContext.Cache[ModifiedImageCacheKey];
                return img;
            }
            set
            {
                HttpContext.Cache.Add(ModifiedImageCacheKey,
                    value,
                    null,
                    System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration,
                    new TimeSpan(0, 40, 0),
                    System.Web.Caching.CacheItemPriority.Low,
                    null);
            }
        }

        #endregion

The image is assigned in id, which is used as the Cache key and is returned back out via json. Once the call is successfully completed an img src attribute is updated to point to a ASHX image handler I wrote that accepts the id as a querystring parameter.

$("#imgUploadedImage").attr("src", imageHandler + response.Id);

The image handler grabs the image out of the cache and then displays it.

public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context) {
        byte[] image = GetImage(context.Request.QueryString["id"], context);
        context.Response.Clear();
        context.Response.ContentType = "image/pjpeg";
        context.Response.BinaryWrite(image);
        context.Response.End();
    }

Cropping Images

Once the image has been uploaded, jCrop is initialized to allow for image crop selection.

$('#imgUploadedImage').Jcrop({
                            onChange: setCoords,
                            onSelect: setCoords
                        });

If the user selects a region to crop and clicks the crop button a jQuery AJAX call is made to the server. The x, y and width, height crop values are posted to the server and then the server crops the image as specified. A new modified image id is returned via json to the view and then the new cropped image is displayed via the image handler ashx once again.

function cropImage() {
            $.ajax({
                url: "/Media/CropImage",
                type: "POST",
                data: { x: x, y: y, w: w, h: h },
                success: function (data) {
                    $('#lblMethodError').hide();
                    $("#pnlNewImage").show();
                    $("#imgNewImage").attr("src", imageHandler + data);
                },
                error: function (xhr, status, error) {
                    // Show the error
                    $('#lblMethodError').text(xhr.responseText);
                    $('#lblMethodError').show();
                }
            });
                    
        }

public JsonResult CropImage(int x, int y, int w, int h)
        {
            try
            {
                if (w == 0 && h == 0) // Make sure the user selected a crop area
                    throw new Exception("A crop selection was not made.");

                string imageId = ModifyImage(x, y, w, h, ImageModificationType.Crop);
                return Json(imageId);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                string errorMsg = string.Format("Error cropping image: {0}", ex.Message);
                Response.StatusCode = 500;
                Response.Write(errorMsg);
                return Json(string.Empty);
            }
        }

Resizing Images

Resizing images follows the same basic pattern. I have hard coded the new image dimensions in the example, but you could easily add a couple of inputs to the view and allow the user to specify the new dimensions.

Download the Example

I put together a full working example that includes all of the code above and is the basis for what I will end up implemented in my SaaS. I hope you find this helpful.

Aaron Schnieder
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Azure SDK 1.3 Beta - System.ServiceModel Exception on Debug

2010-11-30T19:23:00.000-08:00

I started using the new Windows Azure 1.3 SDK (BETA) yesterday and after I installed it I began getting a strange error when I tried to run Debug from Visual Studio 2010.

System.ServiceModel.CommunicationObjectFaultedException was unhandled
Message=The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state.

This issue drove me crazy for the last day and after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I figured out what the fix is:

Make sure your web role web.config is writable (i.e. not locked in read-only by source control or the read-only file bit.)

It looks like there is a bug in the Azure SDK 1.3 that is causing the web.config to be written to during the instantiation of the Azure dev fabric roles. If the web.config is read-only, Azure is blocked from editing the file (no actual edits take place that I can find) and the bizarro System.ServiceModel.CommunicationObjectFailedException message bubbles up.

Secondarily.... Make sure that any declarations are moved to . This was a minor issue causing a few hiccups (not the main problem), but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Hope that helps everyone.

Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

jQuery AJAX Validation Using The Validity Plugin

2010-06-02T09:22:00.001-07:00

Books I recommend on this subject

The following book is the best reference I have found when working with jQuery. I highly recommend it!

jQuery in Action

jQuery Validity

Input validation is one of those areas that most developers view as a necessary evil. We know that it is necessary and we really do want to ensure that we get good input from our users. But most of us are lazy (me included) and input validation is one of those things that gets done but usually is a quick and dirty implementation. This is partly due to laziness and partly do to input validation being painful.

Thanks to the amazing jQuery Validity plug in, input validation can be really slick, easy and robust enough to work any any scenario. I specifically like the Validity plugin because it supports jQuery AJAX input validation. Other input validation implementations that I have worked with require a form post to take place. However, if you are using jQuery.ajax methods then there isn’t a form and you need to validate the formless input.

Here is the download link for the jQuery Validity plugin: http://code.google.com/p/validity/downloads/list

Here is the documentation for the jQuery Validity plugin: http://validity.thatscaptaintoyou.com/

What It Looks Like

The default UI for the validation feedback is pretty nice, take a look:

HTML Input

Here is the HTML markup that I used to create the inputs to validate:

<fieldset id="SignUpFields">
    <legend>Sign Up</legend>
    <label>Name</label>
    <input type="text" id="txtbxName" />
    <label>Email</label>
    <input type="text" id="txtbxEmail" />
    <label>Password</label>
    <input type="password" id="txtbxPassword" />
    <label>Confirm Password</label>
    <input type="password" id="txtbxConfirmPassword" />
    <label>How Did You Hear About Us?</label>
    <input type="text" id="txtbxSource" />
</fieldset>
<button id="btnSubmit">Submit</button>

jQuery and Validity Functions

The jQuery Validity code is extremely straight forward and minimal.

$(function () {
    // Handle the click event for the submit button
    $('#btnSubmit').click(function () {
        // Validate the fields
        if (ValidateFields()) {
            // All fields are valid, $.ajax POST would go here
            $('#SignUpFields').hide();
            $('#btnSubmit').hide();
            $('#lblResponse').show();
        }
    });
});

function ValidateFields() {
    // Start validation:
    $.validity.start();

    // Validate fields
    $("#txtbxName").require();
    $("#txtbxEmail")
        .require()
        .match("email");

    // Validate password strength & match
    $("input[type='password']")
        .require()
        .match(/^.{8,20}$/, "Passwords must be at least 8 characters.")
        .equal("Passwords do not match."); 

    // All of the validator methods have been called:
    // End the validation session:
    var result = $.validity.end();

    // Return whether it's okay to proceed with the Ajax:
    return result.valid;
}

That's It!

That's all it takes, very simple and straight forward. Just that tiny bit of Javascript gives you rich input validation and a nice user experience!

Demo Download

Here is a little ASP.NET MVC demo that I threw together using jQuery Validity so you can see it in action and play with it.

- Aaron Schnieder
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Windows Live Writer Code Snippet Plugin

2010-06-02T09:21:00.001-07:00

I love Windows Live Writer as a blogging application and use it pretty much exclusively for writing my blog posts. The only downside is that I have found it difficult to get code snippets formatted correctly in my posts. Luckily a friend of mine, Tyson Swing, turned me on to a great code snippet plugin for Windows Live writer.

CodeSnippet

The Windows Live Writer code snippet plugin is aptly named “CodeSnippet” and you can download it here: http://wlwplugincollection.codeplex.com/

This Windows Live Writer code snippet plugin is provided by Leo Vidosola. http://lvildosola.blogspot.com/

Settings

Personally, I have found that the following settings work well for the “CodeSnippet” plug in:

Be sure to select the correct code language
No Line Numbers
No Alternate Lines
No Container

Aaron Schnieder
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

jQuery Ajax Error Handling – How To Show Custom Error Messages

2010-05-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

Books I recommend on this subject

The following books are the best references I have found when working with jQuery and ASP.NET MVC. I highly recommend both.

jQuery in Action

Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework

So you want to make your error feedback nice for your users…

Kind of an ironic statement isn’t it? We obviously want to avoid errors if at all possible in our applications, but when errors do occur then we want to provide some nice feedback to our users. The worst thing that can happen is to blow up a huge server exception page when something goes wrong or equally bad is not providing any feedback at all and leaving the user in the dark. Although I do not recommend displaying actual .NET Framework exception messages or stack traces to the user in most instances; they are usually not helpful to the user and can be a security concern.

Using the jQuery Ajax methods ($.ajax(), $.get(), $.post(), etc.) to call your controller (in ASP.NET MVC) or web service (in ASP.NET) to perform server side actions (GET, POST, etc.) is a great way to provide a great user experience in ASP.NET applications while also interacting with a server to get or update data. However, if an error occurs on the server, or an exception takes place in the server side methods, then the problem can often be hidden from the user. Because a Postback is not taking place, if you do not handle errors on the jQuery Ajax methods and display some feedback then the user will be left in a state where they have no idea that a problem has occurred. Luckily, we can use the error callback on the jQuery Ajax methods along with some controller information to display some nice error feedback to the user.

Setting up layers to handle and communicate problems

I have defined an Entities assembly that contains an object to be used to provide operation feedback between assemblies and methods.

namespace jQueryCustomErrorHandling.Entities
{
public class OperationResult
{
public bool Success { get; set; }
public string Message { get; set; }
}
}

My persistence and logic methods pass an OperationResult as a return type.

Persistence Layer

public interface IMyDao
{
OperationResult MyDaoMethod(bool fail);
}
public class MyDao : IMyDao
{
public OperationResult MyDaoMethod(bool fail)
{
var result = new OperationResult() { Success = true };
try
{
if (fail)
throw new Exception("Persistance Error");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
result.Success = false;
result.Message = ex.Message;
}
return result;
}
}

Logic Layer

public interface IMyLogic
{
OperationResult MyLogicMethod(bool fail);
}
public class MyLogic : IMyLogic
{
private IMyDao _myDao;
public IMyDao MyDao
{
get { return _myDao ?? (_myDao = new MyDao()); }
set { _myDao = value; }
}
public OperationResult MyLogicMethod(bool fail)
{
return MyDao.MyDaoMethod(fail);
}
}

And now communicating the errors to the presentation layer

I have created a controller method that calls the logic layer. Notice that if the OperationResult.Success property is set to false, I throw an exception in the controller method. The catch block handles that exception and sets the Response.StatusCode to an error and then also does a Response.Write of the error message. This is how we communicate with the jQuery error callback that there was an error on the server side.

[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public JsonResult MyPostMethod(bool fail)
{
try
{
// Call the logic layer to make the updates
OperationResult result = MyLogic.MyLogicMethod(fail);
// If the result is a failure, throw an exception
if (!result.Success)
throw new Exception(result.Message);
return Json(result.Message);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
string errorMsg = string.Format("Error posting data: {0}", ex.Message);
Response.StatusCode = 500;
Response.Write(errorMsg);
return Json(string.Empty);
}
}

The jQuery.ajax configuration looks like this:

function CallAjaxMethod(fail) {
$('#lblMethodError').hide();
$('#lblMethodSuccess').hide();
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "/Home/MyPostMethod",
data: "fail=" + fail,
dataType: "json",
error: function(xhr, status, error) {
// Show the error
$('#lblMethodError').text(xhr.responseText);
$('#lblMethodError').show();
},
success: function(data, textSuccess) {
// show the success message
$('#lblMethodSuccess').show();
}
});
}

The presentation

In the view I simply have two hidden labels that I show or hide depending on whether or not the jQuery.ajax call was successful. I populate the error label with the custom error message from the server in the jQuery.ajax error callback if a problem occurred on the server side.

This provides a nice way to give feedback to the user when problems occur on the server side and also establishes a nice error handling pattern within your projects.

Demo download

I put together a working demo with full source code that you can download below.

- Aaron Schnieder
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Best jQuery Libraries, Plug-Ins and Controls

2010-04-22T16:57:00.001-07:00

Worried About The Loss Of ASP.NET Controls in MVC? Don’t Be

If you are hesitant of moving to ASP.NET MVC because you are worried about losing all of the awesome ASP.NET controls that you are so used to using, don’t be. Wonderful client side controls already exist to replace most, if not all, of the most used ASP.NET controls (and these controls provide a MUCH BETTER user experience.)

First off, if you are looking for an excellent jQuery book I HIGHLY recommend jQuery in Action

Here are the best jQuery libraries, plug-ins and controls that I have found to date.

What is a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_delivery_network

jQuery

The best client site Javascript library to date. Client side development without jQuery just doesn’t make sense.

Information, Documentation & Download http://jquery.com/
Google CDN http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/index.html#jquery
Microsoft CDN http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/cdn.ashx

jQueryUI

Excellent user interface controls, interactions and effects that are built on top of the jQuery framework. Provides themes for customized look and feel and out of the box excellent user experience.

Calendar control
Dialog / Modal control
Tab control
Accordion control
Animation effects
Draggable / Droppable interaction
Much, much, much more….

Information, Documentation & Download http://jqueryui.com/
Google CDN http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/index.html#jqueryUI

Date.js

Sweet library that makes working with dates on the client side infinitely easier. Great for date calculations, date ranges and date validation.

Text date references; ‘last week’ will return the date for 7 days ago
‘yesterday’ returns yesterday’s date
Date.parse('1 month ago').moveToFirstDayOfMonth() returns the first day of last month
Much, much more…

Information, Documentation & Download http://www.datejs.com/

Validity Validation Plug In

The jQuery Validity plug-in is an extremely flexible, lightweight and easy to use validation library. You can validate anything on the fly in any instance. It doesn’t require a form or anything else, just setup the validation rules (there are a bunch of common validations built in) and go.

Information, Documentation & Download http://validity.thatscaptaintoyou.com/

DateRangePicker

The DateRangePicker plug-in from the Filament Group is an awesome little user experience element that makes selecting dates so much nicer. You can select predefined dates or date ranges easily (such as last week, last month, yesterday, etc.) and is the best user experience have seen selecting a date range.

Information, Documentation & Download http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/date_range_picker_using_jquery_ui_16_and_jquery_ui_css_framework/

jQuery Tools

jQuery Tools is an excellent library of user interface elements. It is fairly lightweight and can add some very nice user experience elements to your applications.

Tooltips
Overlays
Scrollable Galleries
Flash Embedding

Information, Documentation & Download http://flowplayer.org/tools/index.html

jqGrid

Ah jqGrid, how I love thee jqGrid. This little beauty is a wonderful Gridview alternative in ASP.NET MVC. I wrote up an overview of using it here: http://www.schnieds.com/2010/01/gridview-in-aspnet-mvc.html

Information, Documentation & Download http://www.trirand.com/blog/

jQuery Templates

jQuery Templates are a way to accomplish DataBinding in ASP.NET MVC. Basically you pre-define some HTML elements and then when the page is rendering you use a jQuery AJAX call to get some data from the server, create instances of the HTML elements, populate the values and then append the items into the DOM. jQuery Templates makes this process very easy. Here is a nice tutorial on using this plug-in: http://publicityson.blogspot.com/2009/11/dynamic-content-using-html-templates.html

Information, Documentation & Download http://plugins.jquery.com/project/jquerytemplate

Using Ionics Isapi Rewrite for ASP.NET MVC in IIS 6

2010-01-25T14:51:00.001-08:00

If you are running IIS6 and want to deploy an ASP.NET MVC app it is a royal pain in the behind. Pretty URLs (www.mysite.com/prices instead of www.mysite.com/prices.aspx) aren’t supported out of the box. There are several solutions to this problem. First, you can still use MVC with IIS6 out of the box and just append .mvc to all of your files. This approach works, but you lose the nice URLs. Second, you can add a wildcard mapping that processes EVERY resource in a website through the ASP.NET ISAPI dll (images, css files, javascript, everything!) There is a known performance hit with this method and I found it to be quite noticeable when I tried it. Third, you can configure a URL re-writing module that will enable pretty URLs and do so in a well performing manner.

I wanted to go with option 3, which is a bit more work but I feel the best overall solution. Unfortunately, most of the information and “How To” posts I found out on the internet didn’t work, were horribly outdated or just didn’t make sense. So with that in mind I download the latest version of Ionic’s open source Isapi Rewrite module, read through their documentation and then worked out a configuration in IIS 6 that got everything working. Here is a step by step process that you can follow to easily (and freely) get ASP.NET MVC pretty URLs running under IIS 6 using Ionic’s Isapi Rewrite module.

Ionics Isapi Rewrite Installation and Configuration

Download Ionic Isapi Rewrite http://iirf.codeplex.com/
Unzip the contents
Create the following folder c:\inetpub\IonicRewriter (or a location of your choice)
Copy IonicIsapiRewriter-2.0-Release-bin\bin\IIRF.dll (from the contents of the download you unzipped) to c:\inetpub\IonicRewrite
Create a new text document, name it IirfGlobal.ini
Select both files, right click and choose Properties
Select the Security tab
Ensure IIS_WPG has read & execute permissions on both IIRF.dll and IirfGlobal.ini

Edit IirfGlobal.ini and include the following:

# IsapiRewrite4.ini
## Turn off logging, enable if you need to debug routing
#RewriteLog  c:\_Logs\iirfLog.out
#RewriteLogLevel 3
RewriteFilterPriority HIGH
IterationLimit 1
RewriteEngine ON
StatusUrl /iirfStatus
RewriteRule ^/Default\.aspx /Home.mvc [I,L]
RewriteRule ^/$ /Home.mvc [I,L]
RewriteRule ^/([\w]+)$ /$1.mvc [I,L]
RewriteRule ^/(?!Content|Scripts|App_Data|Images)([\w]*)/(.*) /$1.mvc/$2 [I,L]

** The last rule filters out any files in the Content, Scripts, App_Data and Images folder from the URL rewrite. This prevents a .MVC extension from being appended to root folder of the resource being requested (i.e. mysite.com/Content.mvc/site.css) To add another other folders you want to exclude, just add another |FolderName to the regular expression.

Copy the IirfGlobal.ini file to your website directory and rename it to IIRF.ini
Select IIRF.ini, right click and choose Properties
Ensure IIS_WPG has read & execute permissions on IIRF.ini

Internet Information Services (IIS) 6 Configuration

** These configuration instructions are for a single website. If you want to configure the Ionics Isapi Rewrite module for all of IIS 6, perform these steps on the Websites root directory.

Open IIS Manager
Expand the Web Sites node
Right click on the web site you want to configure and select Properties
Select the ISAPI Filters tab
Click the Add button
Enter "Ionic Rewriter" for the filter name
Browse to c:\inetpub\IonicRewriter\IIRF.ddl and select the file (or the location that you placed IIRF.dll into in Step 3)
Click OK
Select the Home Directory tab
Click Configuration
Click the Add... button under "Application extentions"
Click the Browse button and select C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll for the executable
Enter .mvc for the extension
Limit verbs to: GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG
UNCHECK "Verify that file exists"
Click OK
Click OK, OK to close the main properties dialog
In IIS Manager, go to Application Pools and Start/Stop the application pool that your MVC application is running under
In IIS Manager –> Web Sites, select your MVC web site and stop/start the web site

IIRF Status and Troubleshooting

On the server, open Internet Explorer and browse to: http://yourmvcwebsiteurl/iirfStatus
You should see the IIRF Status Report if you followed the steps properly
Specifically check the INI file status for both the Global and Site Specific sections, if there are any problems double check your file locations and file permissions as stated above
If IIRF still isn’t working correctly, consult the IIRF v2.0 Operator’s Guide located in the contents of the zip file you downloaded under AdminGuide/Help. There is a section in the chm titled “Verifying and Troubleshooting Installation”
You can also enable logging in the ini files for IIRF and take a look at the IIRF log output to diagnose problems and errors. If there isn’t a log being generated and un-commenting the logging options that means that IIRF isn’t routing properly.

ASP.NET MVC Application Configuration

Modify your Global.asax route code to handle .mvc routes as follows

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default.mvc",                                          // IIS 6 Ionic Isapi Rewrite support
    "{controller}.mvc/{action}/{id}",                       // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }, // Parameter defaults
    new { controller = @"[^\.]*" }                          // Don't look for a controller for non mvc files (ico, images, etc.)
);

Build & publisher your MVC application
Copy your MVC application to your server, restart the application pool once more and your nice routes should now work

Download

Here is a zip file containing the IIRF.dll, IirfGlobal.ini and IIRF.ini files as well as a sample ASP.NET MVC application with the Global.asax routing setup. It is everything you need and you can just copy/paste these files into your web application using the instructions above.

Aaron Schnieder
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

GridView in ASP.NET MVC

2010-01-21T14:12:00.001-08:00

One of the controls that it seems like everyone in the ASP.NET community is most concerned about losing when switching to ASP.NET MVC is the ubiquitous GridView control to render grid based data. Fear not ASP.NET community there is a GREAT alternative that, in my opinion, has a lot more to offer than the GridView in terms of user experience.

First off, if you are looking for an excellent jQuery book I HIGHLY recommend jQuery in Action

I have seen a few different solutions to display grid data in ASP.NET MVC. There is of course a for loop in the View that will render a table (or CSS based layout that mimics a table.) Telerik is putting together a commercially available GridView for MVC, which looks pretty nice but also has a licensing cost associated with it (if you are using it in a commercial application). http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc Both solutions work, but I don't like the downsides of either, which is where jqGrid comes in. jqGrid is an awesome, free, open source jQuery based grid control.

jqGrid

Application site: http://www.trirand.com/blog/
Demos: http://trirand.com/blog/jqgrid/jqgrid.html
jqGrid is a very fully featured grid that supports loading data client side via AJAX (JSON) calls, paging, sorting, row editing, etc., etc. etc. I believe it can do everything the Telerik control can do and comes with a fully free license for any application.

ASP.NET MVC jqGrid Demo Application

Since I have already used jqGrid in several applications and got everything working pretty smoothly I figured that it would be helpful to make a full demo application available to the community so it can be downloaded and then the pattern easily adapted into ASP.NET MVC applications.

JSON data source

I setup the grid to use a controller method that will return a JSON result formatted so that the jqGrid can use it. In the example the call to get the JSON data can be manipulated on the fly and the contents of the grid changed via an AJAX call by filtering the sales data by Date Range.

public ActionResult JsonSalesCollection(DateTime startDate, DateTime endDate,
string sidx, string sord, int page, int rows)
{
SalesLogic logicLayer = new SalesLogic();
List<Sale> context;
// If we aren't filtering by date, return this month's contributions
if (startDate == DateTime.MinValue || endDate == DateTime.MinValue)
context = logicLayer.GetSales();
else // Filter by specified date range
context = logicLayer.GetSalesByDateRange(startDate, endDate);
// Calculate page index, total pages, etc. for jqGrid to us for paging
int pageIndex = Convert.ToInt32(page) - 1;
int pageSize = rows;
int totalRecords = context.Count();
int totalPages = (int)Math.Ceiling((float)totalRecords / (float)pageSize);
// Order the results based on the order passed into the method
string orderBy = string.Format("{0} {1}", sidx, sord);
var sales = context.AsQueryable()
.OrderBy(orderBy) // Uses System.Linq.Dynamic library for sorting
.Skip(pageIndex * pageSize)
.Take(pageSize);
// Format the data for the jqGrid
var jsonData = new
{
total = totalPages,
page = page,
records = totalRecords,
rows = (
from s in sales
select new
{
i = s.Id,
cell = new string[] {
s.Id.ToString(),
s.Quantity.ToString(),
s.Product,
s.Customer,
s.Date.ToShortDateString(), 
s.Amount.ToString("c")
}
}).ToArray()
};
// Return the result in json
return Json(jsonData);
}

Javascript setup

The call to configure the jqGrid when the document ready event is fired is pretty straight forward.

jQuery("#list").jqGrid({
url: gridDataUrl + '?startDate=' + startDate.toJSONString() + '&endDate=' + endDate.toJSONString(),
datatype: "json",
mtype: 'GET',
colNames: ['Sale Id', 'Quantity', 'Product', 'Customer', 'Date', 'Amount'],
colModel: [
{ name: 'Id', index: 'Id', width: 50, align: 'left' },
{ name: 'Quantity', index: 'Quantity', width: 100, align: 'left' },
{ name: 'Product', index: 'Product', width: 100, align: 'left' },
{ name: 'Customer', index: 'Customer', width: 100, align: 'left' },
{ name: 'Date', index: 'Date', width: 100, align: 'left' },
{ name: 'Amount', index: 'Amount', width: 100, align: 'right'}],
rowNum: 20,
rowList: [10, 20, 30],
imgpath: gridimgpath,
height: 'auto',
width: '700',
pager: jQuery('#pager'),
sortname: 'Id',
viewrecords: true,
sortorder: "desc",
caption: "Sales"
});

Download

Here is the full application for you to download and play with.

I hope this is helpful in your MVC applications.

Aaron

http://www.churchofficeonline.com

ASP.NET MVC Locale User Control (State/Province, Country)

2010-01-03T17:54:00.001-08:00

A while back I wrote a locale control for ASP.NET that gave you a nice and easy way to plug in a cascading state/province – country control into your ASP.NET websites. Now that I have moved on to using ASP.NET MVC for my new projects I needed the same control, only this time in MVC. There were aspects of the previous version of the control that I didn’t like and wanted to refactor anyways, specifically the usage of an UpdatePanel (YUCK), reliance on PostBacks, no unit tests and poor separation of concerns for the presentation, logic and persistence layers. I now present to you the brand new ASP.NET MVC version of my Locale control with all of those issues addressed.

Overview of the ASP.NET MVC Locale User Control

ASP.NET MVC v1 User Control (Partial View)
jQuery handles the change events and retrieves new State/Province lists via a JSON call
Separation of concerns between the Presentation Layer, Logic Layer and Persistence Layer
Easily customizable data source via the LocaleDao persistence class
Unit tests with full dependency injection for all Controller and Logic methods

Basic Locale User Control Usage

Add the user control to your view:

<p>
    <% Html.RenderPartial("LocaleUserControl"); %>
</p>

Locale User Control View:

<%@ Control Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewUserControl" %>
<p>
    <label for="StatesProvinces">State / Province: </label>
    <%= Html.DropDownList("StatesProvinces") %>
</p>
<p>
    <label for="Countries">Country: </label>
    <%= Html.DropDownList("Countries") %>
</p>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function() {
        var countries = $("#Countries");
        var statesprovinces = $("#StatesProvinces");
        countries.change(function() {
            statesprovinces.find('option').remove();
            $.getJSON('/Base/StatesProvinces', { countryId: countries.val() }, function(data) {
                $(data).each(function() {
                    $("<option value=" + this.Id + ">" + this.Name + "</option>").appendTo(statesprovinces);
                });
            });
        });
    });
</script>

The BaseController class holds the generic methods to support this user control (and other generic shared user controls in your project.)

public class BaseController : Controller
    {
        // Dependency
        protected ILogicFactory _logicFactory;
        public ILogicFactory LogicFactory
        {
            get { return _logicFactory ?? new LogicFactory(); }
            set { _logicFactory = value; }
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the states provinces select list.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="country">The country to filter the states/provinces list by.</param>
        /// <param name="selectedStateProvince">The State/Province to select. Pass null if no default State/Province selected.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public SelectList GetStatesProvincesSelectList(Country country, StateProvince selectedStateProvince)
        {
            // Create the object to return
            SelectList slSps = null;
            if (country != null)
            {
                // Get the collection of states and provinces
                List<StateProvince> statesProvinces = LogicFactory.LocaleLogic.GetStateProvincesByCountry(country.Id);
                
                // Build a selectlist from the statesprovinces collection
                if (statesProvinces != null)
                {
                    slSps = new SelectList(
                    statesProvinces.Select(s => new SelectListItem
                    {
                        Text = s.Name,
                        Value = s.Id.ToString()
                    })
                    , "Value", "Text", selectedStateProvince == null ? string.Empty : selectedStateProvince.Id.ToString());
                }
            }
            return slSps;
        }
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the countries select list.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="selectedCountry">The country to select. Pass null if no default country selected.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public SelectList GetCountriesSelectList(Country selectedCountry)
        {
            // Get the collection of countries, select United States by default
            List<Country> countries = LogicFactory.LocaleLogic.GetCountries();
            // Create the object to return
            SelectList slCountries = null;
            if (countries != null)
            {
                // Build a selectlist from the countries collection
                slCountries = new SelectList(
                countries.Select(c => new SelectListItem
                {
                    Text = c.Name,
                    Value = c.Id.ToString()
                })
                , "Value", "Text", selectedCountry == null ? string.Empty : selectedCountry.Id.ToString());
            }
            return slCountries;
        }
        [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get)]
        public ActionResult StatesProvinces(int countryId)
        {
            // Returns JSON collection of stateprovince that are associated
            // with the countryId passed in
            List<StateProvince> sps = LogicFactory.LocaleLogic.GetStateProvincesByCountry(countryId);
            // Format the JSON return
            return Json(sps.Select(s => new
            {
                s.Id,
                s.Name
            }));
        }
    }

Data Source

The data source for the locale control is an XML file that is included in the App_Data folder. You might want to put this data into your database and then use a nice ORM like NHibernate to load the data up in the persistence layer rather than relying on the XML file. This is very easy to accomplish by changing the LocaleDao class, everything else should just work after you swap out the back end.

Unit Tests

I used Microsoft Visual Studio Tests to write unit tests for all of the controller methods and logic layer methods that had any sort of logic in them. I also used Moq to mock the dependencies in the methods under test and ensure the viability of the tests. You should be able move these unit tests into your project when you use the Locale user control. If you aren’t using the Visual Studio Test framework and are using NUnit instead, it is quite easy to change the syntax.

Download

You can download the full solution including the example MVC application, locale user control and unit tests below.

- Aaron

http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Essential Free Software For .NET Developers

2010-01-03T12:05:00.001-08:00

Every software nerd has their suite of essential free applications they can’t live without, here’s mine:

Development Freebies

Visual Studio Express Editions http://www.microsoft.com/exPress/
Free versions of the most excellent IDE, Visual Studio 2008.

jQuery http://jquery.com/
Most awesomest javascript library ever; if I could marry it I would.

GhostDoc http://submain.com/products/ghostdoc.aspx
Makes XML method documentation in .NET very smooth.

NUnit http://www.nunit.org/index.php
Fast and lightweight unit testing library for .NET.

Firebug http://getfirebug.com/
_MOST USEFUL WEB DEVELOPMENT TOOL EVER CREATED_ Nuff said.

Moq http://code.google.com/p/moq/
Excellent mocking framework for dependency injection in unit tests.

NHibernate https://www.hibernate.org/343.html
Absolutely incredible ORM package, this is what entity framework should be. If you are using DataSets, entity framework, LINQ to Sql, etc. stop right now and go with Domain Driven Design and NHibernate.

Expresso http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm
Handy regular expression build, validation and testing tool.

OS Utilities & Application Freebies

Virtual Clone Drive http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html
Incredibly useful iso mounting utility that allows you to instantly mount any iso into a drive.

Auslogics Disk Defrag http://www.auslogics.com/disk-defrag
Very nice free disk defrag app to replace the base Windows version (works in Windows 7.)

Notepad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
AWESOME little app for editing XML, HTML, etc.

Windows Live Writer http://download.live.com/writer
Best blog post authoring application I have found.

7Zip http://www.7-zip.org/
Nice compression / extraction utility.

WinDirStat http://windirstat.info/
Easy and visual way to figure out where all of your hard disk space has gone.

Picasa http://picasa.google.com/
Incredible useful photo and video management app.

Paint.NET http://www.getpaint.net/
Sweet Photoshop Lite replacement (FREE!).

Digsby http://www.digsby.com
Excellent IM client that supports every protocol under the sun.

FoxIt Reader http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
Lightweight PDF reader.

Virtual Box http://www.virtualbox.org/
Most excellent virtualization application. Puts Virtual PC to shame.

Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/
Super awesome analytics for all of your web applications.

ASP.NET Session Expiration Redirect

2009-07-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

Most of the applications I work with require some form of authentication and a timed expiration of the authentication ticket and session object. When the expiration takes place it can wreak havoc on your application code if you are relying on the Session object or have authentication code in place to ensure that the user is authenticated before you serve up any data for them.

Unfortunately ASP.NET doesn't provide a nice out of the box solution for handling the session timeout gracefully. Everything expires behind the scenes and your user is left unaware of what has happened. Additional problems can arise if the user abandoned their browser in a state that you didn't code for, which can result in errors or exceptions taking place.

With this in mind I like to put a Session Expired page in place in my applications and pro-actively send the user there when their session ends. This accomplishes a few different things:

1) Provides a nice user experience for your users
2) Prevents your application from being left in an unknown state when the session / auth ticket expires
3) Prevents application errors and exceptions from occurring when a user tries to perform an action on a page after their session / auth ticket has expired

Nested MasterPage(s) For All Authenticated Pages

You need to implement a MasterPage (or a Page base class) for all of your authenticated pages so you can inject a bit of javascript to handle the redirect on session timeout.

Get Your Web.config Settings Straight

Make sure that your auth ticket timeout and session timeout match.

<system.web> 
    <!-- 
        Session configuration 
        - Timeout value needs to match Forms Auth timeout** 
    --> 
    <sessionState timeout="45" /> 
    <!-- 
        The <authentication> section enables configuration 
        of the security authentication mode used by 
        ASP.NET to identify an incoming user. 
    --> 
    <authentication mode="Forms"> 
        <forms loginUrl="Login.aspx" 
           protection="All" 
           path="/" 
           requireSSL="false" 
           timeout="45" 
           name=".ASPXAUTH" 
           slidingExpiration="true" 
           defaultUrl="Login.aspx" 
           cookieless="UseDeviceProfile" 
           enableCrossAppRedirects="false" /> 
</system.web>

Create Your Session Expiration Page

Create a page for your users to be taken to when their session expires. I created SessionExpired.aspx with the following message:

<h2>Session Expired</h2>                   
<p> 
    <span style="color:White;">Your session has expired due to inactivity.</span> 
    <br /> 
    <br /> 
    <a href="Login.aspx">Click here to login again</a> 
</p>

Ensure the Authentication ticket is signed out in your code behind:

FormsAuthentication.SignOut();

Add The Session Expiration Javascript To Your Page_Load

In the Page_Load method of your MasterPage (or base page class) add the following code:

// Handle the session timeout 
string sessionExpiredUrl = Request.Url.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Authority) + "/SessionExpired.aspx"; 
StringBuilder script = new StringBuilder(); 
script.Append("function expireSession(){ \n"); 
script.Append(string.Format(" window.location = '{0}';\n", sessionExpiredUrl)); 
script.Append("} \n"); 
script.Append(string.Format("setTimeout('expireSession()', {0}); \n", this.Session.Timeout * 60000)); // Convert minutes to milliseconds 
this.Page.ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this.GetType(), "expirescript", script.ToString(), true);

That's It

The session timeout script should be injected into each of your authenticated pages now. The client's browser will begin the countdown after each page has loaded or each PostBack has occurred. Once the countdown is reached the browser will redirect to your SessionExpired page.

Reference:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/shahed/archive/2007/09/05/redirect-to-login-page-on-session-expiration-asp-net.aspx

Aaron Schnieder

http://www.churchofficeonline.com

The Power (and complexity) Of .NET Unit Testing

2009-05-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

I have recently begun a journey down the path of unit testing. I have been engineering software for many years now and up until this point my testing has been limited to integration testing my code using a front end. While this type of testing is effective in certain instances, it is not thorough and leaves a lot of unconvered bugs. I am part of a very strong engineering team at the moment and one of the software design techniques they swear by is unit testing. As I learn more and more about unit testing the more I am sold on this concept.

Where To Begin
I purchased "The Art of Unit Testing" by Roy Osherove to get my head wrapped around this new software design paradigm; this book is awesome. A great book that covers the basics, the concepts, the theory as well as the application in real world scenarios. I highly recommend you get this book: http://www.manning.com/osherove/

Unit Testing Aids
Unit testing takes time to engineer, no doubt about it. However there are a number of great software packages that will make your unit testing life a lot easier. Whatever unit testing framework you end up choosing needs a good mocking framework to co-incide with it. With that in mind let me suggest TypeMock.

TypeMock Isolator - Aiding your ASP.NET unit testing efforts

Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.

Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.

The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolator, a unit test tool and Ivonna, the Isolator add-on for ASP.NET unit testing, for a bargain price.

Typemock Isolator is a leading .NET unit testing tool (C# and VB.NET) for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such as SharePoint, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, WPF, Silverlight and more. Note that for unit testing Silverlight there is an open source Isolator add-on called SilverUnit.

The first 60 bloggers who will blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Isolator ASP.NET Bundle license (Typemock Isolator + Ivonna). If you post this in an ASP.NET dedicated blog, you'll get a license automatically (even if more than 60 submit) during the first week of this announcement.

Also 8 bloggers will get an additional 2 licenses (each) to give away to their readers / friends.

Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

How To Register An ASP.NET Custom Control

2009-04-08T06:05:00.001-07:00

If you write a custom ASP.NET control you need to register the control either on the Page level or globally in your web.config so you can use the control on forms in your web application.

ASP.NET Page Level Custom Control Declaration

If you want to register your control per page that you use it on, you can use the following declaration at the top of your web form:
<%@ Register TagPrefix="myWebControls" Namespace="My.Website.Controls" Assembly="My.Website" %>

ASP.NET Site Level Custom Control Declaration

If you want to register your asp.net control(s) for you entire website you can use the following declaration in your web.config file:
<add tagPrefix="myWebControls" namespace="My.Website.Controls" assembly="My.Website"/>

Parser Error Message: Unknown server tag

If you pre-compile our web application and do not specify the assembly in your control declaration you will get the following error when trying to use your ASP.NET custom control:
Parser Error Message: Unknown server tag 'myWebControls:ViewEditTextControl'.

Aaron Schnieder
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

LINQ vs FOREACH vs FOR Loop Performance

2009-03-24T09:21:00.001-07:00

I made a blatantly stupid logic mistake the other day in a business logic layer method that I was writing and got the following exception: “Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.” The problem what I was trying to remove an object from a collection while I was enumerating through it using a FOREACH statement. After I realized what I had done I solved the problem by populating a new collection with a little bit of LINQ.

        1: // Get the original list of values

List<bool> booleanValues = GetBooleanList(numberOfTests);

// Now create a new list containing the objects we want to remove 

// from the original list

List<bool> valuesToDelete_Linq = new List<bool>(from b in booleanValues

                                                where !b

                                                select b);

// Now remove the values safely from the original list

foreach (bool b in valuesToDelete_Linq)

    booleanValues.Remove(b);

There were several solutions I could have used to solve the problem; specifically I could have used a FOR loop, multiple FOREACH loops or the LINQ solution that I posted above (and there are probably more solutions that I haven’t thought of.) This led me to wonder about the performance for each solution, which in turn led me to this post: http://frater.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/collection-was-modified-enumeration-operation-may-not-execute/

FOR – FOREACH – LINQ Performance Tests

My system specs:
- Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
- 4 GB memory
- Windows Vista Enterprise 64bit
- .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

After reading through the post above and the comments that it was followed by, I decided to test all three solutions to see what the speed was like. The results surprised me by quite a lot. I knew LINQ was somewhat slow, but I didn’t realize exactly how slow until I ran these tests.

  For Loop results: Bool Count = 2002, Time = 00:00:00.0060000

  Double For Each results: Bool Count = 2002, Time = 00:00:00.0760000

  LINQ results: Bool Count = 2002, Time = 00:00:00.0760000

  For Loop results: Bool Count = 20002, Time = 00:00:00.1380000

  Double For Each results: Bool Count = 20002, Time = 00:00:00.9780000

  LINQ results: Bool Count = 20002, Time = 00:00:00.9820000

  For Loop results: Bool Count = 200002, Time = 00:00:06.4100000

  Double For Each results: Bool Count = 200002, Time = 00:01:39.0640000

  LINQ results: Bool Count = 200002, Time = 00:01:39.4220000

So yeah, LINQ is considerably slower than using a FOR loop in this instance. However, I would personally still use LINQ in instances where I am working with a small amount of data and the performance difference is negligible. Why? Because in my opinion LINQ is much easier to read, understand & lends itself to fewer bugs.

Performance Test Application Download

You can download and run the performance test that includes implementations of each solution I mentioned above from the link below.

Aaron Schnieder

http://www.churchofficeonline.com

CollapsiblePanelExtender Height with data controls

2009-03-18T15:13:00.001-07:00

I recently ran into a problem where I need to use the AjaxControlToolkit CollapsiblePanelExtender to contain a GridView. The CollapsiblePanelExtender is inside an UpdatePanel and items can be added to the table that drives the GridView within the CollapsiblePanelExtender. After a new item was added to the SQL table and then databound to the GridView, the CollapsiblePanelExtender height would not adjust to account for the new rows.

This problem was driving me nuts until I found the answer in the ASP.NET Forums. All you need to do is wrap your databound control(s) in an asp:Panel or Div with the following style attribute:

style="overflow: hidden;"

Adding that tag will take care of the problem and the CollapsiblePanelExtender will adjust to the proper height.

Example:

     <asp:UpdatePanel ID="clpsUpdatePanel" runat="server" UpdateMode="Conditional">

        <ContentTemplate>

            <asp:Panel ID="pnlTitle" runat="server">

                <div style="padding: 1px; cursor: pointer; vertical-align: middle;">

                    <h1>

                        This is my collapsible panel title

                        <asp:Image ID="collapseImage" runat="server" SkinID="TipGreen" />

                    </h1>

                </div>

            </asp:Panel>                      

            <!--Panel with style="overflow: hidden;" will ensure the CollapsiblePanelExtender will display 

                the contents of a databound control after PostBack -->

            <asp:Panel ID="pnlDataBoundControl" runat="server" Height="100%" style="overflow: hidden;">

                <asp:GridView ID="grdvwExcludedAffiliates" 

                      runat="server" 

                      AutoGenerateColumns="True" 

                      DataSourceID="odsMyData" >

                </asp:GridView>

                <asp:ObjectDataSource ID="odsMyData" 

                    runat="server" 

                    OldValuesParameterFormatString="original_{0}" 

                    SelectMethod="GetMyData" 

                    TypeName="BusinessLogic.MyLogic">

                    <SelectParameters>

                        <asp:Parameter DefaultValue="0" Name="Id" Type="Int32" />

                    </SelectParameters>

                </asp:ObjectDataSource>

                <asp:UpdateProgress ID="updProgress" runat="server" AssociatedUpdatePanelID="clpsUpdatePanel">

                    <ProgressTemplate>

                        <asp:Image ID="prgImage" SkinID="Spinner" runat="server" />

                    </ProgressTemplate>

                </asp:UpdateProgress>

            </asp:Panel>

            <ajaxToolkit:CollapsiblePanelExtender ID="pnlExtender" 

                runat="Server"

                TargetControlID="pnlDataBoundControl" 

                ExpandControlID="pnlTitle" 

                CollapseControlID="pnlTitle"

                Collapsed="False" 

                ImageControlID="collapseImage"  

                ExpandedImage="~/Images/arrowdown.gif" 

                CollapsedImage="~/Images/arrow.gif"

                SuppressPostBack="false" />

        </ContentTemplate>

    </asp:UpdatePanel>

- Aaron Schnieder

http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Creating a SQL Exclusion Table Using LEFT JOIN

2009-03-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

For a current project I needed to create a table that contained a list of exclusions that should be filtered out from another table when a specific set of criteria were met. This is a pretty common scenario where you have a large table of data and you want to be able to provide the ability through a user interface for a user to filter the data using an exclusion list.

I have access to an amazing SQL guru, Peter Loos, who was able to help me brainstorm the best approach for altering existing stored procedures to include a filter for information included in the new exclusion table I added for this feature. During the course of speaking with Peter I learned the following:

!= operator is being deprecated, we need to use <> from here on out.

TSQL NOT IN performance sucks; a JOIN should be used in place of NOT IN if at all possible.

My initial solution was do modify the existing stored procedures which returned the list that I needed to filter with my exclusion table by adding a WHERE clause that included a NOT IN (SELECT…) statement. After speaking with Peter it became clear that NOT IN could cause performance problems down the road, so I went down the path of figuring out how to do this with a JOIN statement.

Example Exclusion Table

In this example of how to setup an exclusion table in SQL, we will use an address book example. Lets say I have an address book of all of the people I know and their contacts like the following:

AddressBook Table

SQL Table Definition

     CREATE TABLE #AddressBook(AddressBookId INT PRIMARY KEY

                               ,FullName varchar(100) NULL

                               ,Phone varchar(20)    NULL

                               ,Location varchar(200) NULL)

   INSERT INTO #AddressBook VALUES (1, 'Jack Bauer', '853-234-5968', 'Los Angeles, CA')

   INSERT INTO #AddressBook VALUES (2, 'John Stewart', '451-856-4468', 'New York, NY')

   INSERT INTO #AddressBook VALUES (3, 'Jim Cramer', '452-938-7228', 'New York, NY')

   INSERT INTO #AddressBook VALUES (4, 'Stephen Colbert', '451-467-3333', 'New York, NY')

   INSERT INTO #AddressBook VALUES (5, 'Bernie Madoff', '609-611-4468', 'Federal Prison, PA')

   SELECT * FROM #AddressBook

Resultset

NotMyFriends Table

Now lets say I want to filter my address book down to a list of just people I consider my friends, so I create an exclusion table and enter those contacts that I DON’T consider to be friends.

SQL Table Definition

   CREATE TABLE #NotMyFriends(NotMyFriendsId INT PRIMARY KEY

                               ,AddressBookId INT)

   INSERT INTO #NotMyFriends VALUES (1,3)

   INSERT INTO #NotMyFriends VALUES (2,5)

   SELECT * FROM #NotMyFriends

Resultset

Filtered Resultset

So the end goal of creating the NotMyFriends exclusion table is to be able to filter the AddressBook table, removing anyone listed in the NotMyFriends table so my final resultset is a list of contact information for just my friends.

NOT IN Solution

The first way I thought of doing this was to use a NOT IN statement, which filtered the results just like I wanted. The only problem with this solution (as I learned from Peter Loos) was the NOT IN statement performance sucks.

SQL NOT IN Query

   SELECT * 

   FROM #AddressBook AS MyFriends

   WHERE MyFriends.AddressBookId NOT IN (SELECT AddressBookId from #NotMyFriends)

Resultset

JOIN Solution

So now I wanted the exact same results as I got using the NOT IN statement, but I want to use a JOIN instead to improve the performance of my query.

SQL JOIN Query

   SELECT * 

   FROM #AddressBook AS MyFriends

   LEFT JOIN #NotMyFriends

   ON MyFriends.AddressBookId = #NotMyFriends.AddressBookId

Resultset

We are almost there, except the filter didn’t work. The LEFT JOIN combined our full table of addresses & our exclusion table list, but it didn’t filter the results. Looking at the results above we need to add a WHERE clause to our LEFT JOIN.

SQL JOIN Query with WHERE Clause

   SELECT * 

   FROM #AddressBook AS MyFriends

   LEFT JOIN #NotMyFriends

   ON MyFriends.AddressBookId = #NotMyFriends.AddressBookId

   WHERE #NotMyFriends.AddressBookId IS NULL

Resultset

Query Script Example Download

As you can see, the final SQL JOIN query that included the WHERE clause gets us the filtered results we wanted from the exclusion table contents and performs well to.

I created a sample TSQL script that uses temp tables to demonstrate the queries I posted above. You can download it here:

Aaron Schnieder

http://www.churchofficeonline.com

The keys to successfully delivering software

2009-03-03T19:00:00.001-08:00

I have been developing and delivering software for over 10 years now and I have learned a few things along the way. I am not the smartest developer, the most elegant engineer or a hardcore software design geek. I have however had a good deal of success delivering software that meets business requirements on time and learned what works and what doesn’t along the way. In this post I will share with you what I have learned that works well and what routinely causes failure.

Extremes lead to failure

Let me warn you in advance of a theme that you are going find throughout this post; avoid extremes. This is a general principle in life that applies heavily to successful software development. For example, there is nothing wrong with alcohol in moderation. However, if your goal in life it is get hammered at any possible opportunity you are going to watch your life go down the drain. Cheeseburgers are great, they are yummy and one of man’s greatest inventions. However, if you hit up In-N-Out every day for lunch and throw down a couple of double-doubles you aren’t going to be a happy camper after a while. The same basic principles apply to successfully delivering software, you need healthy moderation in all areas of the process.

Cut out the cancer

You need to have a good engineering team. Now the definition of a good team can very widely, but here is my take. You need a group of engineers that are good at what they do, have interpersonal skills, can communicate, check their egos at the door and all share the common goal of delivering quality software that meets the business needs on time. If you have engineers on the team that are a cancer to your success you need to figure out how to deal with them rather than avoid them or mitigate them and hope the problem goes away.

One of the common engineering cancers is the apathetic engineer. This is the engineer that comes in, does just enough not to get fired and looks for every opportunity to do anything other than work. The apathetic engineer will drag down those they work with and will make the rest of the team of engineers who are working hard angry.

The other common engineering cancer I have seen on teams is the ego engineer. This is the engineer that feels they are the apex of software development and no one before them or after them will ever be as good. The ego engineer is a poison to the team and most of the other engineers will avoid working with this person like the plague. They aren’t part of the team, they are an island and almost always are more talk than substance.

Your engineering team needs to gel well, with strengths and weakness complimenting each other. It is also very important that your team enjoy working together and respect each other. If your team hates to work with each other and there is disrespect within the group they will not perform well. Remove any cancer that exists and when you add new team members make sure that they are the right team fit.

Success Starts with good requirements

You can successfully deliver good software on time without good requirements, but it isn’t easy. Again, you don’t need an extreme here. You don’t need your marketing/product group to spend months and months and months analyzing requirements and debating over little nuances only to deliver the best set of requirements ever written two weeks before the year long project is due.

On the other end of the spectrum are back of the napkin requirements. I had a product guy once that would go to bars, get drunk and then write out all of our “requirements” on the back of a napkin while he was hammered. He insisted that we should be able to successfully build any complex application with no more input that what he was able to scribble on a napkin while inebriated. As you can imagine, this end of the extreme didn’t work out too well either.

You don’t need perfect requirements, but you need good requirements. Good requirements are well thought through, documented well enough that engineers can understand what the business needs are by reading them and have actionable requests. Wireframes, mockups and user experience scenarios are also very helpful to put into requirements.

don’t under or over engineer

Ah, now that you have a good team in place and you have some requirements you can work with here comes the fun part, actual engineering. Unfortunately it is still pretty easy to fail the actually software development part of the process even if you have a good team and solid requirements. Successfully delivering software from an engineering point of view requires that engineers be utilized effectively and over or under engineering is not allowed to be part of the process.

Under engineering is otherwise known as hacking or spaghetti code. This is where your engineer’s only concern is getting the feature “done” and they have no concern for how it is done. Common excuses here are that “the requirements are changing all the time”, “we just had to get something in there”, “lets just get it working and refactor it after the fact”, etc., etc., etc. Hacking crappy code together never works out well. Even if you can hack features in to a working state, this approach will lead to tons of bugs and doesn’t create a foundation that you can build upon for future features and enhancements.

Over engineering is a little bit trickier than hacking. Hacking is generally considered “bad” by most engineers and you won’t get much push back if you bring it up as a problem. Over engineering on the other hand is commonly accepted and viewed as good work because the theories and design being applied are all generally good software development. The problem here is that if you spend all of your time writing the most awesome, perfect, beautiful, slick, lovely, sweet, hotness widget you will probably never deliver anything at all, let alone on time. Software needs to be designed well, but if it is over engineered, overly complex and plans too far ahead in the future it is like spending the time to lay the foundation for a skyscraper when all you need to build is a single story house that you might want to add a room on to later on. Over engineering can be just as big of a problem as hacking because at the end of the day you still don’t end up with that you need to be successful.

Balance is once again the key to success. Don’t hack, but also don’t spend so much time trying to put together the ultimate software design for what you need that you don’t get anywhere. Come up with solid designs that are flexible and are forward thinking, but keep them within the scope of the requirements and apply KISS (keep it simple stupid) as much as humanely possible. Make things only as complex as they need to be, comment your code and keep on alert for engineering scope creep as well as project scope creep.

How does this apply to .NET development specifically?

These basic principles apply to successful software development in any language on any platform. However, from what I have seen .NET development is specifically prone to problems with under engineering. Because Visual Studio is such an awesome IDE and because Microsoft makes so many of the tasks so easy to complete in ASP.NET there is a tendency for developers to rely on the wizards and just brute force something that works into place. ASP.NET developers need to intimately understand the platform that they are developing on as well as understand best practices for general software design.

I hate to say it, but a lot of the problems come from software developers that worked in previous Microsoft frameworks such as Visual Basic who “update” their skills by opening Visual Studio 2008 and starting to code. The .NET framework is vast and if you want to write successful software in .NET you need to understand a) solid OOP software design principles and b) the framework itself. If you don’t understand solid OOP design principles, you need to take some classes or update your knowledge with some good books to get the basics. If you don’t understand .NET, I would recommend that you read some of the Intro to the Framework books and take one of the foundational Microsoft tests. The tests aren’t perfect, but if you study for them and pass them I guarantee you will come out understand the .NET framework better than most.

How Do I proceed?

If you read through this post and identified some area(s) that your company is currently struggling in, the fix probably won’t be quick or simple. You are going to have to put together a plan of what needs to change and how it should change, get buy in from the right individuals and then slowly implement process changes or team changes that will fix any issues that you identify. It is hard work to get past process or team problems, but well worth it when your software cycle becomes easier and is successful on a frequent basis.

Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

LINQ Tips & Tricks - I Heart LINQ

2009-01-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

Ok, I have to admit it; I heart LINQ... I have a man-crush on LINQ; if LINQ were a president it would be Baberaham LINQoln. Ok, that last one was pretty bad, but I have had that quote from Wayne's World floating around in my head for a while now and it had to come out sooner or later. :)

When I first heard about LINQ at a big Microsoft launch event I thought it was crap. The developer evangelist showed how you can generate inline SQL statements using LINQ and left it at that. My first thought was "great, a technology that takes us back to the stone ages of SQL development where developers don't put any thought into their database queries." How wrong I was; LINQ is awesome and can be a huge benefit to a single developer working with a local database, enterprise developers using stored procedures and developers not working with databases at all.

I purchased the most excellent "LINQ in Action" book by Fabrice Marguerie, Steve Eichert & Jim Wooley; which I have been reading through in my spare time. If you are looking for a good resource to learn LINQ beyond the web I highly recommend this book.

I have also been trying to use LINQ as much as possible in my development, as it is a huge time saver. Along the way I have learned a few tips & tricks for problems I needed to solve using LINQ which I will share with you below. I will follow up this post with other LINQ based posts including a couple of LINQ based ASP.NET controls that I am working on.

Prereqs

Remember to include a reference to LINQ in your project as well as your class before trying to use LINQ or you are going to have some problems.
C#: using System.Linq;
VB.NET: Imports System.Linq

Returning a Single Result from a LINQ Query

So lets say that you want to use a LINQ query to return a single result. How do you do that?

Here is an example:

string emailAddress = (from i in individuals
where i.MemberID.Equals(individual.MemberID)
select i.EmailAddress).Single();

Using a LINQ Like % Query

How do you write a query to search for a partial string match? Something like "WHERE s LIKE 'asdf%'

Here is an example:

string myPartialSearchString = "Smit";
var peoples = from i in individuals
where i.LastName.Contains(myPartialSearchString)
select i;

Handling NULL Parameters in a LINQ Queries

Lets say you have parameters(s) in your LINQ query where clause, how do you handle that?

Here is an example:

var peoples= from i in individuals
where (string.IsNullOrEmpty(lastName) i.LastName.Equals(lastName))
select i;

The C# ?? null coalescing operator (and using it with LINQ)

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/09/20/the-new-c-null-coalescing-operator-and-using-it-with-linq.aspx

101 LINQ Examples

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336746.aspx

-Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com/

How Has The Recession Effected Developers?

2008-12-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

Poll

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With all of the recession talk in the news, the daily massive layoffs that are taking place and the general doom & gloom feeling in the air I am very curious about how the recession has specifically effected developer's jobs. I have read many articles on CNN, MSNBC, etc. that have identified "computer programmer" positions as relatively safe jobs during this tough economic time. Have you found that to be true, are your jobs as developers relatively stable?

I created the poll above to try to get an idea of what effect this recession is having on real people in the developer community. Please take time to categorize yourself as close as possible in the categories I have provided for the poll. Also, please make suggestions if you feel that other categories would be more helpful.

How I Have Been Effected

I am one of the lucky ones that found a new job during the recession (about 3 months ago now.) I was also able to sell a house and feel very blessed at this point. I make it a point to keep my skills up to date and to try to continue to improve. However, I still worry about the future and how hard it might be to find a new gig if necessary.

Thanks for your responses and your time. Refer your developer friends to take the poll also, the more data the more useful this will be.

Thanks!

Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Using Virtuals for Server Components in Development

2008-12-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

Problem:
As a developer it is almost a given that you need to run some sort of server resources (database, web server, etc.) to support your application development. You can run all of your necessary server components on your development machine, but doing this will hog your precious resources, clutter up your workstation and make standing up a new development machine if needed very time consuming.

Solution:
Virtualization

Virtual PC

First off, I assume that you are familiar with virtual machines or virtual pcs. If not, it is basically the ability to run a fully contained separate OS within a shell on your local computer. For example, your host development machine might be running Windows XP or Windows Vista. You can create a virtual running Windows Server 2003, Linux, Vista, etc. that runs just like any other self contained application on your local host computer. Using virtuals is a very powerful development tool for any developer because it gives you easy access to testing environments, playing around with software installs without messing up your host box and in the context of this post, hosting server components that don't need to be on your local development host computer.

Virtualization Software

Microsoft Virtual PC

FREE
Works fairly well
Windows only

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

VMWare Workstation (PC) or Fusion (Mac)

Costs $$
Works EXCELLENT
Windows & Mac

http://www.vmware.com

- Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Team Foundation Server (TFS) Installation Errors & Fixes

2008-10-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

I have had the unfortunate pleasure of conducting three different Team Foundation Server - TFS - installations in the last couple of years. Each installation has been difficult to say the least and each installation has presented me with new & challenging errors. To benefit others who need to install TFS, this post is dedicated to TFS installation errors and how to fix them.
If you have a TFS installation error & fix you would like me to add to this post, please put it in the comments and I will get it added ASAP.
Hopefully this post can become a single valuable resource for TFS installation error troubleshooting.

Before You Install

If you are upgrading, BACK UP EVERYTHING!!!!
Follow the TFS installation guide STEP BY STEP; if you skip a step you are probably screwed (you can find the guide here)
Setup the pre-requisite domain accounts TFSSETUP;TFSSERVICE;TFSREPORTS and use them as described in the TFS installation guide
MAKE SURE TFSSETUP is in the local Administrators groups on all TFS related servers
MAKE SURE you log in as TFSSETUP to perform ALL of the component installations

General Useful Information

The installation log files are stored in your account's temp folder, to view it just click on Start -> Run and type %temp%
Delete all of the existing files in your temp directory before you attempt the TFS installation, this will make sure you can find the files you need
The TFS installation log of note is called VSMsiLog538C.txt or something similar
Create a .reg file in Notepad with the following lines and execute it before performing the installation to enable verbose TFS installation logging

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
"EnableAdminTSRemote"=dword:00000001
"Logging"="voicewarmup"

Reporting Services Related Errors

If you get any errors during TFS installation, use the following troubleshooting steps to make sure that Reporting Services is installed & functioning correctly.

Open Internet Explorer and try to browse to http://yourservername/reports
If this doesn't work, look in the Application log for errors and try to resolve those errors
Open SQL Reporting Services Configuration utility
Make sure that none the system checks are in error state

READ THIS

In my installation I resolved the errors with the fixes I have listed below and Reporting Services was running great. However, the TFS install would still fail and after I exited the installation Reporting Services would be broken. As it turns out the TFS install was changing Reporting Services configuration during the installation and breaking Reporting Services along the way!!! So here is what I did to fix it:

Make sure Reporting Services is working correct by visiting http://yourservername/reports in IE
Start the TFS Install
When you get the Reporting Services error LEAVE THE INSTALL RUNNING
Go back and fix Reporting Services until you can successfully view http://yourservername/reports again
Go back to the TFS Installer and click "Retry"; the install should work from there!!!

Error: 28806

Cause #1:
The TFS application pool should be running under the TFSSERVICE identity to provide the necessary security authorizations & identification.
Fix #1:

Open Internet Information Server Manager
Go into Application Pools
Right click on the Reporting Services application pool
Click on the Identity tab and change the identity to TFSSERVICE
Try the installation again

Cause #2:
Reporting Services database connection is currently set to SQL Login or Service Credentials. The connection needs to be using Windows Authentication.
Fix #2:

Open Reporting Services Configuration
Click on the Database Connection menu item on the left
Change the login type to Windows Authentication
Use the TFSSERVICE credentials to login
Try the installation again

Error: 28805

Cause #1:
The Reporting Services encryption key is being bad.
Fix #1:
For whatever reason sometimes the TFS install just doesn't like the Reporting Services Encryption Key that RS decided to generate. In these circumstances, Error 28805 can be fixed by doing the following:

Open Reporting Services Configuration
Click on the Encryption Keys menu item on the left
Backup the existing key to somewhere safe
Delete the encryption key
Try the installation again

Error: 32000

Cause #1:
During an upgrade scenario the schemas from the old version of TFS may have become corrupted somehow. The schema corruption is the root of the error and causing the installation to fail.
Fix #1:
Replace the corrupted schemas with good ones. This might require a call to Microsoft to get the uncorrupted schemas (I had to.)

Hope this helps.

Remember, post your problems/solutions in the comments and I will add them to the list.

- Aaron

WCF BasicHttpBinding with Windows Authentication & a 2.0 Client

2008-10-10T07:50:00.001-07:00

Windows Authentication is a great way to provide authentication security in your WCF services. With the WSHttpEndpoing and a .NET 3.0+ client Windows Authentication works right out of the box with WCF, everything is just peachy. However, if you want to use the BasicHttpBinding for .NET 2.0 client backward compatibility then it is going to require a bit of configuration for both the clients & server.

I covered the BasicHttpBinding in detail in this post, I would recommend you check that out before you dive into specifically using Windows Authentication with the BasicHttpBinding.

Service Configuration

There are two areas that you need to focus on to enable Windows Authentication in a WCF service, the Web.config file & the service implementation.

Web.config Settings

All of the configuration for the Windows Authentication WCF BasicHttpBinding service takes place in the Web.config file. Here is exactly what you need:

Enable Windows Authentication & the Role Provider

<authentication mode="Windows" />

<!-- Configure the Role Provider, Currently configured for Windows Tokens -->

<roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider" />

Create The EndPoint

<endpoint

    address="basic"

    binding="basicHttpBinding"

    contract="IService"

    bindingConfiguration="WindowsAuthenticationBasicHttpBinding" />

Configure the BasicHttpBinding Binding

<bindings>

    <basicHttpBinding>

        <binding name="WindowsAuthenticationBasicHttpBinding">

            <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">

                <transport clientCredentialType="Windows"/>

            </security>

        </binding>

    </basicHttpBinding>

</bindings>

Service Implementation

There are a couple of different ways you can do authentication for your WCF operations. I would highly recommend to base all of your authentication security on group or role membership rather than on single user access. Coding your operation authentication security in a role based manner will make administration of users allowed to access your operations much easier to manage in the future.

Method 1: Operation Authentication Decoration

Edit your service implementation class (Service.cs or similar) to include authentication decorations for your web operations.

// Declarative Role Based Security

[PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Role = OperationRoles.MyRoleName)]

Method 2: Explicit Code Level Authentication

Put the following code within your operation method to do explicit authentication in the actual method code.

// Programmatic Role Based Security

if (!System.Threading.Thread.CurrentPrincipal.IsInRole(OperationRoles.MyRoleName))

    throw new FaultException("Unauthorized Exception");

Full operation example code:

// Declarative Role Based Security

[PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Role = OperationRoles.MyRoleName)]

public string GetData(int value)

    // Programmatic Role Based Security

    if (!System.Threading.Thread.CurrentPrincipal.IsInRole(OperationRoles.MyRoleName))

        throw new FaultException("Unauthorized Exception");

    // The user is authorized, so return back the data requested

    return string.Format("You entered: {0}", value);

Client Configuration

The .NET 2.0 client needs to explicitly define the network credentials that are going to be sent across the wire. By default .NET 2.0 web references to web services don't pass credentials over the wire, which is why the explicit credential code is necessary. Here is how you need to configure your .NET 2.0 client to ensure your crendentials are passed across the wire and therefore allow you to be verified as a user in a valid role.

// Set the credentials to send across the wire to the WCF web service

ServiceRef.Service ws = new WCFMultipleEndpointWinAuth2_0ClientWebApp.ServiceRef.Service();

// Use the default credentials, this can be set more specifically as needed

ws.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

Sample Code

Here is a sample solution with service & client projects using the WCF BasicHttpBinding & Windows Authentication.

I have included the WCF Service with the authentication methods as well as a .NET 2.0 client configured to connect to the web service and pass appropriate credentials and a .NET 3.5 client configured to connect to the same web service for reference.

NOTE: In order to run the service, you will need to configure the service in IIS as a virtual directory at the following URI: http://localhost/WCFBasicEndpointWinAuth/Service.svc so Windows Authentication can be used. If you need help configuring IIS7 for ASP.NET/WCF development purposes refer to this post.

Aaron

http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Setting Up IIS7 In Vista For ASP.NET / WCF Development Purposes

2008-10-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

I recently needed to setup IIS in Vista (again) to support my ASP.NET & WCF development purposes. Since there are a few different things to remember when setting up IIS in Vista to support development purposes (ASP.NET, WCF, Windows Authentication, etc.) I figured others might benefit from a quick How To.

Prerequisite: Make sure the .NET 3.0+ framework is installed.

1. In Vista, go to Control Panel -> Programs and Features

2. Select the IIS Feature Checkbox

3. Select the ASP.NET Application Feature

4. Select Authentication Feature(s) You Need

5. Register WCF Handlers With IIS7

Run the following command from the command prompt to register the WCF handlers with IIS7:

"%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe" -r -y

That's it, you should be good to go with your ASP.NET and/or WCF development needs under Vista.

Common Error Messages

If you don't have the ASP.NET feature installed, you will get the following error message... just FYI.

This configuration section cannot be used at this path. This happens when the section is locked at a parent level. Locking is either by default (overrideModeDefault="Deny"), or set explicitly by a location tag with overrideMode="Deny" or the legacy allowOverride="false".

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Server Error in Application “DEFAULT WEB SITE/ EmployeeService “Internet Information Services 7.0

Error Summary

HTTP Error 404.3 - Not Found

The page you are requesting cannot be served because of the extension configuration. If the page is a script, add a handler. If the file should be downloaded, add a MIME map. Detailed Error InformationModule StaticFileModule

Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

How To Have a Successful .NET Developer Interview

2008-09-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

I have been through a number of interviews now in my career and I have fared pretty well in many of them. While going through the interviews, I have created a mental list of what has worked well and what made a good impression on those conducting the interview. I have also made note of what impresses me (or turns me off) when I am the one conducting an interview.

Here are my top tips for success during your .NET developer interview.

Have an Honest Resume

A successful interview starts with your resume. If you exaggerate or flat out lie about your experience and/or skills you are setting yourself up for failure. The truth is always the best policy when looking for a new job (and in life in general.) If you don't have the skills that the hiring company is looking for, then it isn't a good match. If they know your honest strengths & weaknesses before they hire you, there won't be a rude awakening when you start working and can't perform as expected.

If you look at your resume and realize that your skills aren't very attractive, then it is time to update your skills - not throw every tech buzzword you can think of into your resume.

On the flip side of this, don't under-value yourself on your resume either. Make sure to highlight what you are good at and confidently state your level of expertise in an area. If you are unsure of what level you are in an area, compare your skills to those of your co-workers & peers. This is usually a good way to determine your level of expertise in a given area.

Confidence

Easier said than done, but you need to go into an interview with confidence. If you followed my first point and have an honest resume, this part will come a lot easier.

If you doubt your abilities & what you can accomplish it will come across in the interview. If you need to, rehearse answers to common questions that you might face, talk through your past projects & experience aloud (it might seem strange, but it will help you become more comfortable) and make note of your strengths before entering the interview. The more preparation you do, the more comfortable you will be during the interview.

There is a fine line between being confident & being boastful, and you want to stay on the confident side. Don't go into the interview thinking that you are the biggest, baddest developer the company has ever seen - there will always be someone better out there. Valuable team players recognize their need for others on the team.

Living Examples of Your Work

If you want to set yourself apart from other candidates you need to show your prospective employer why they should hire you over Joe Schmoe #2. One way to do this is give your prospective employer the ability to view an example of your work first hand. Interviews are great, but nothing is as helpful as being able to review actual code that a potential employee has engineered.

If you are a website developer, figure out something that interests you and develop it in your free time. Create a fan site for your hobby, a site about your family or even develop your own application as a side business.

Create a blog. Whether or not you are a website developer, you can have a technical blog that showcases your interests, provides code samples & also demonstrates your communication skills & ability to document your work.

Preparation

Do your homework before you go to the interview. Read up about the company you are interviewing with, search professional social networking sites for information on the people interviewing you, prepare answers for technical questions as well as behavioral questions. If you go into the interview well prepared you will be more confident & comfortable in your answers and your prospective employer will notice the polish.

Ask Important Questions

As part of your preparation, write down questions to ask your prospective employer. Figure out what makes you happy as a developer: Do you like chaotic programming? Are you more structured? Do you want engineering vs. get 'er done development? Do you care about having different environments to work in (Dev, Test, Prod)? Is a QA team important to you? Based on the working conditions that make you enjoy development, come up with a set of questions to ask your prospective employer to learn more about how they approach software development.

Example questions:

What size is the company?
What size is the development team?
Are there dedicated resources for server administration, database administration, QA, etc.?
Are there training opportunities available? Are there funds available for off site training classes?
Could you describe the process for an average project? (i.e. sales, marketing, deadlines, requirements, etc.)
Are there any development best practices in place?
Do you adhere to a specific SDLC?

Dress Like a Professional

I know this is a big thing to ask for most computer geeks, but dress professionally. Early in my career one of the executives at a company I worked for told me this : "Dressing professionally is one of the easiest things you can do to make a big impact on how people view you." This has stuck with me and is something that I have followed throughout my career. You are applying for a professional level position and you should dress the part. This is an easy thing to do and it is just silly to give a bad first impression by looking like a slob during your interview.

Buy a nice suit & tie. If you can't coordinate colors to save your life, then find a cute girl working in the suit department at the store of your choice and have her select an appropriate business suit, tie & shirt. Comb your hair, shave & polish up your look.

After you get hired you can dress according to company policy for developers, but make a professional first impression.

Hope that helps!

Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com

Plesk MySQL Performance Settings

2008-09-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

One of the servers I was working on recently had a Plesk control panel installed on it, which as it turns out can greatly effect MySQL performance. By default, the client database settings that Plesk uses for MySQL limit the resources allocated to your clients. This can be good or bad. If you are in the web hosting business and don't want your clients taking your server down with heavy MySQL usage this is probably a good thing. However, if you are running the server as a dedicated web application server and want all of the power you can get for your app, as I am, this is a bad thing.

After a lot of tracing, I found that my web application was experiencing terrible MySQL performance. I did a bunch of research and found a MySQL configuration that solved all of my performance issues. The key to getting good MySQL performance on a Plesk controlled server is to tweak the client MySQL settings.

MySQL my.ini Performance Configuration

I found the following MySQL configuration settings solved all of my performance issues. (Make sure you edit the client configuration, see the next section for more on that.)

[MySQLD]
port=3306
basedir=C:\\Program Files\\SWsoft\\Plesk\\Databases\\MySQL
datadir=C:\\Program Files\\SWsoft\\Plesk\\Databases\\MySQL\\Data
default-character-set=latin1
default-storage-engine=INNODB
query_cache_size=64M
table_cache=1024
tmp_table_size=32M
thread_cache=32
myisam_max_sort_file_size=100G
myisam_max_extra_sort_file_size=100G
myisam_sort_buffer_size=2M
key_buffer_size=32M
read_buffer_size=16M
read_rnd_buffer_size=2M
sort_buffer_size=2M
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=24M
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
innodb_log_buffer_size=10M
innodb_buffer_pool_size=64M
innodb_log_file_size=10M
innodb_thread_concurrency=8
max_connections=300
key_buffer=48M
max_allowed_packet=5M
sort_buffer=2M
net_buffer_length=4K
old_passwords=1
[client]
port=3306

My Server Specs:

Intel Dual Core @ 2GHz
2 GB of memory
(You may need to tweak the MySQL configuration settings I posted above if you server specs are drastically different than mine.)

Plesk MySQL Setting Locations

There are two different locations for MySQL settings in Plesk. One location contains a my.ini file that effects any client databases you create. The other location contains a my.ini file that effects Plesk's operation. The important one to focus on here is the Client my.ini.

Client MySQL Settings
C:\Program Files\SWSoft\Plesk\Databases\MySQL\Data\my.ini

Plesk MySQL Settings
C:\Program Files\SWSoft\Plesk\MySQL\Data\my.ini

-Aaron
http://www.churchofficeonline.com