In Visual Studio 2010 we introduced a simple and straight forward method of transforming web.config during publishing/packaging. This support is called XML Document Transform, aka XDT. It allows you to transform any XML file, not just web.config. To learn more about XDT check out the docs . Since we've released XDT there has been interest in re-using the transformation engine in other scenarios. To enable some of those scenarios we released XDT on NuGet . After that we started working on integrating XDT into NuGet and asked for some feedback from the community . In order to cover all the scenarios for NuGet users we decided to release the source of XDT on codeplex.com using an Apache 2.0 license . You can now redistribute XDT with your own...

This Tuesday, April 23, we’ll be hosting Windows AzureConf – a free online event for and by the Windows Azure community.  It will be streamed online from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM PST via Channel 9 , and you can watch it all for free. I’ll be kicking off the event with a Windows Azure keynote in the morning (a great way to learn more about Windows Azure if you haven’t used it yet!). Following my talk the rest of the day will be full of excellent presentations from members of the Windows Azure community.  You can ask questions from them live and I think you’ll find the day an excellent way to learn more about Windows Azure – as well as hear directly from developers building solutions on it today. Last year’s Windows AzureConf was a great success...

We’ve seen a huge adoption of ASP.NET Web API since its initial release.  In February we shipped the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Update – which added a number of additional enhancements to both Web API and the other components of ASP.NET.  The ASP.NET Team has been hard at work on developing the next set of features (lots of cool stuff coming).  One of the great things about this work has been how the team has used the open source development process – which we announced we were adopting last spring - to collaborate even more closely with the community to both validate the features early, as well as enable developers in the community to directly contribute to the development of them. Below are some updates on two of the great...

This morning we announced the general availability release of our Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) support for Windows Azure – including our new Virtual Machine and Virtual Network capabilities.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production apps.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using it today. In addition to supporting all of the features and capabilities included during the preview, today’s IaaS release also includes some great new enhancements: New VM Image Templates (including SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and SharePoint images) New VM Sizes (including Larger Memory Machines) New...

If you’ve ever tried to test Orchard part drivers, you may have been blocked by the fact that the methods on drivers are protected. That, fortunately, doesn’t mean they are untestable. Those methods are still accessible through explicit interface implementations. In particular, drivers implement IContentPartDriver, which is defined as follows. public interface IContentPartDriver : IDependency { DriverResult BuildDisplay(BuildDisplayContext context); DriverResult BuildEditor(BuildEditorContext context); DriverResult UpdateEditor(UpdateEditorContext context); void Importing(ImportContentContext context); void Imported(ImportContentContext context); void Exporting(ExportContentContext context); void Exported(ExportContentContext context); IEnumerable<ContentPartInfo>...

I really like jQuery’s pattern of attribute getters and setters. They are fluent and work really well with HTML and XML DOMs. If you specify a value in addition to the name, it’s setting, otherwise it’s getting. In C#, we have an OK API for XML, XElement, but it’s not as easy to use as jQuery’s attr methods. It is also missing the flexibility of Javascript with regards to parameter types. To recreate the simplicity of attr in C#, I built a set of extension methods for the most common simple types: var el = new XElement("node"); el.Attr("foo", "bar") .Attr("baz", 42) .Attr("really", true); var answer = el.Attr("baz"); The element built by this code looks like this: <node foo="bar"...

On April 27, something very cool is happening. A bunch of Windows Azure MVP's and community activists are organizing a Global Windows Azure Bootcamp . This is a completely free, one-day training event for Windows Azure, all organized by the community, and presented in person all over the World. I’m not sure if this is the largest community event ever - it is very cool to see how many places this event is happening.  Below is the location map as it stands today – and new locations are being added daily. Right now there are almost 100 locations and several thousand attendees already registered to take part.  Browse the location listings to find a location near you. If you are interested in learning about Windows Azure or want more...

Today we released some great enhancements to Windows Azure. These new capabilities include: Active Directory : General Availability release of Windows Azure AD – it is now ready for production use! Backup Service : New Service that enables secure offsite backups of Windows Servers in the cloud Web Sites : Monitoring and Diagnostic Enhancements All of these improvements are now available to start using immediately (note: some services are still in preview). Below are more details on them: Active Directory: Announcing the General Availability release I’m excited to announce the General Availability (GA) release of Windows Azure Active Directory!  This means it is ready for production use. All Windows Azure customers can now easily create...

Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/ranganh/archive/2013/04/07/teched-india-data-exposing-azure-mobile-services-through-web-api.aspx For those who attended my session at TechEd India 2013 , one of the topics I presented was, on Azure Mobile Services. I also presented on new enhancements to ASP.NET with the Visual Studio 2012 Fall Update. As a mixture of both the sessions, I mentioned about building a Web API feed for Tech Ed Data that could be consumed through Azure Mobile Services. If you are new to Azure Mobile Services, you can read up about the same here Azure Mobile Services is best consumed through client apps such as Windows 8, iOS and Android Apps. Recently, we also launched the HTML5 Apps template for Azure Mobile Services...

Tutorial and Tool written by Troy Dai with assistance from Rick Anderson (Twitter @RickAndMSFT ) Search for “asp.net web api routing” on stackoverflow , you’ll find many questions. How exactly does Web API routing work? Why doesn’t my route work? Why is this action not invoked? Often time it is difficult to debug route debugger. To address this issue I wrote this tool named “ASP.NET Web API Route Debugger” trying to make Web API developers’ lives a bit easier. In this article I’ll first introduce how to set up route debugger. Then I’ll introduce how routing works in Web Api. It is followed by three examples of how to use the route debugger in real cases. How to Step up Route Debugger You can install Route Debugger from NuGet ( http://www.nuget...