Jason Mauss' Blog Cabin : .NET Development

How to determine object responsibility?

jamauss — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:21:00 GMT

Right now I'm working on a project that requires its own custom registration/authentication system and it got me thinking about object responsiblity and OO design.

I'll pose this question and see what kind of opinions everyone has.

I have a "User" class with the usual properties - first name, last name, email, etc.etc.

Should my User class have a method named "Register" where the User object is responsible for knowing how to register itself - OR - should I have a 'Register' method in say, some kind of security class that accepts a User object and uses the property values to register the User? I've abstracted all the direct DB interaction code into a data access library but where the Register method belongs - in terms of good standard OO design - still has me thinking. I might have to dig up my copy of "Object Thinking". It's been a while since I read it but I remember it having good stuff on topics like this.

What do you think the right design is?

Firefox Support for WebParts & Atlas

jamauss — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 22:19:00 GMT

I just have to point to this, because of the "cool" factor. Some really awesome stuff being developed, and I'm really glad to see it supporting Firefox since it's been my main browser for about 2 years now.

Annoyance in Windows Forms 2.0 - ContextMenuStrip Controls

jamauss — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 03:22:00 GMT

When you add a MenuStrip control to your form - the Windows Forms Designer automatically sets it as the menu for the MainMenuStrip property of your form. However, when you add a ContextMenuStrip control to your form, it does not set it as the context menu in the ContextMenuStrip property automatically. You have to go set it manually yourself. I wonder what the reason is for this - anybody know?

Also - it's really difficult to change the order (vertically) of MenuStrip controls at design-time on a form when you have more than one. Anybody know the easy way to do it?

Get a descriptive size string for your uploads

jamauss — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:04:00 GMT

In an ASP.NET page, when you've used a System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlInputFile control in your page - sometimes you want to get the size of the file uploaded. The HttpPostedFile class has a ContentLength property - but the value attainable by using the .ToString() method leaves something to be desired. So, here is a simple little method I wrote to get you a more descriptive string from the ContentLength value - I thought I'd share it here for anyone that wants to do something similar.

C#:

public static string GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength(int ContentLength)
{
      if(ContentLength > 1048575)
      {
      return String.Format("{0:0.00 mb}", (Convert.ToDecimal((Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024) / 1024))) ;
      }
      else
      {
      return String.Format("{0:0.00 kb}", (Convert.ToDecimal(Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024))) ;
      }
}

VB.NET:

Public Function GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength(ByVal ContentLength As Integer) As String
   If (ContentLength > 1048575) Then
      GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength = String.Format("{0:0.00 mb}", (Convert.ToDecimal((Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024) / 1024)))
   Else
      GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength = String.Format("{0:0.00 kb}", (Convert.ToDecimal(Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024)))
   End If
End Function

You can adjust the string format to attain more precise size measurements - all I cared to have was something like "230.45 kb" or "2.12 mb" - but you can do whatever you want, of course.

How-To-Select a Charting Component for .NET

jamauss — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:07:00 GMT

My first How-To-Select Guide on Charting components for .NET has finally made it's way onto the web!

I'd be interested in hearing feedback if you are interested enough to read it. You can find it here.

What is your RSS strategy and how is it designed?

jamauss — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:04:00 GMT

As I've been working on my DevCampus.com website, one of the things I am taking very seriously and spending time thinking about and researching is my RSS strategy (or "xml feeds" in general, I'd like to at least offer ATOM and maybe another format to please everyone).

Last night I started reading Developing Feeds with RSS and ATOM. I'm hoping this book will give me some insights into being on the other side of the fence. What I mean by "other side of the fence" is that while I've been blogging and consuming RSS/ATOM feeds for years now, I've never actually been responsible for creating the XML and producing my own feeds for anything yet. Since nobody can deny the popularity and demand for xml feeds, I'd be abandoning quite an audience if I didn't have a huge variety of feeds for people when DevCampus finally goes live. (Which I hope to be around the first of the year, btw) While I think it's a bit extreme for Scoble to say you should be fired if you don't have an RSS feed, I would agree that you look out of touch and out of date if you don't provide any. Gotta give the people what they want, right?

So anyway - I have high hopes and goals for RSS and the content on my site. I've listed them below. If you've ever been in charge of managing feeds for a website, blogging engine, whatever, feel free to chime in with your comments. I haven't really got far into this book yet so I'm looking for feed-managing wisdom from those willing to share it. "You shouldn't do that, it'll chew up far too much bandwidth" or "Oh that's easy, use this custom HttpHandler/HttpModule that's freely available at this website and it will take care of everything for you" - you know what I'm talking about. I imagine that feeds have been around long enough that some components to produce feeds are already out there. The notes below are as much for my brainstorming as they are for you to read so, keep that in mind I guess. I make no claims that these ideas are original or innovative.

DevCampus.com RSS Goals:

Feeds for the most recent content - the last 5, 10, 25 or 50 pieces of content. Or maybe provide a URL that lets someone specify the number of items they'd like to see with a querystring value?
Allow feeds to be dynamically requested by the use of certain URL's. For example, if a request like http://www.devcampus.com/Database/SQLServer/RSS (or /ATOM) came into my application, I'd like for my application to know this is a request for the latest content under the SQL Server course under the Database department. This would also allow me to automatically have feeds available every time I add another department or course of content. I could simply construct URL's based on the current department and course and stick that behind a little RSS or ATOM icon for each department and/or course home page.
Request Tracking. I'd like to be able to keep track of when and how often requests for feeds are made. If I see 10 times as many requests being made for an ASP.NET 2.0 feed as I do for underwater basket weaving in VB.NET I can adjust what content I am writing for accordingly.
Search Feeds. If someone searches for a specific keyword or phrase I'd like for them to be able to subscribe to the results as a feed. That way they don't have to keep coming back to my site and search to see if there is any content that they might be interested in.
Custom feed URL's. For example, if I wanted to allow people to subscribe to newsletters via RSS, I'd like to be able to designate a specific URL (that I store in a database most likely) and have any URL in that list of URL's return the XML for a certain feed. Maybe I'd just associate a certain SQL query with that URL and provide a DataReader, DataSet, or DataTable to an RSS/ATOM generating component. Whatever works.

So - if you have any advice for me, I'm all ears.

Amazon.com Web Services

jamauss — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 04:30:00 GMT

Since I'm an author and I like to write about technical stuff, I'd really like to be able to use Amazon.com's web services to display books on my DevCampus.com website that relate to the topic(s) covered in an article or whatever text is on the page. Sorta like the way Google AdSense works, but for books. For example, on an article page that covers XML Web Services, I'd like to see the top 4 or 5 search results for XML Web Services (w/ a cover shot image, associate link, price (maybe), isbn, star rating (maybe), etc.) in a simple ASP.NET user/server control package. From what I've looked at so far, it seems like Amazon.com Web Services are up to the task. And it's free to register as a web services developer - nice.

Has anyone ever developed using their web services and if so - what was your experience like? I was going to roll my own "relevant books" feature for the site but figured I would save myself several hours by consuming Amazon.com's Web Services instead.

Data Modeling and Enums

jamauss — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:40:00 GMT

How should enums be modeled in your database? Static Lookup Table? Or should they be left out of the data model and contained only in the object model? Specifically, I'm thinking about an enum that is represented in the UI layer by something like a combo or list box.

Rather than just coming to a decision on my own - I thought I would open it up to my readers (both of you..heh) to give me your opinions on how enums should be modeled in the database. I'm guessing that there are a couple of different ways of thinking on this that both have convincing arguments.

Visual Studio 2005 Guide now online!

jamauss — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:09:00 GMT

There had been a lull for a while in getting new guides published to the internet over at Xtras HowToSelectGuides.com website. Just the other day though, Mike S published the Visual Studio 2005 Guide, written by Mike Gunderloy.

What I'm even more jazzed about is that the first guide that I wrote on .NET Charting components, is next in line to be published. When it gets published, it will be here.

Installing the aspnetdb on SqlExpress

jamauss — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 18:01:00 GMT

I've been cruising around the ASP.NET 2.0 beta forums and the web w/ Google at my side, but this one is just kicking my butt so far.

I've got VS.NET 2005 Beta 2 and SQL Express installed on a Virtual PC running WinXP SP2 and I'm trying to run the aspnet_regsql -W (the wizard) to create the aspnetdb so that I can play with WebParts and drop a WebPartManager on one of my ASP.NET pages. When I provide the wizard with all of the information and click "Next >>" to have it create the database I get an error - "Creation or change of the SQL Server database failed"

I've seen lots of posts and messages around the web that say, "just run the wizard and it will setup the database for you" but...that's not happening for me. Anybody know if there are web.config entries or other prerequisites to check on before running the wizard? Anybody else had this problem?

The names have changed

jamauss — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:32:00 GMT

I recently read here about the name changes given to Indigo and Avalon. From now on...

Indigo = Windows Communication Foundation
Avalon = Windows Presentation Foundation

Perhaps Microsoft will feel like renaming a portion of Enterprise Service to "Windows Transaction Foundation" or maybe a portion of the .NET Framework for WinForms controls to "Windows Template Foundation" ?

Ok, sorry, bad joke. I know.

UPDATE: It seems that, in addition to stealing his first name, I've stolen Jason Bock's joke about the new names for Indigo and Avalon. So, in addition to it being a bad joke, it wasn't even original! Guess I won't try to make that transition into comedy any time soon.

CodeHeads

jamauss — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 04:30:00 GMT

I haven't even finished watching Billy Hollis' GrokTalk but I've gotta link to it. Not only does it provide a good dose of comic relief but it drives homes an important point. There are a number of interesting videos there actually. I just watched Jon Goodyear's talk on Master Pages, too.

GrokTalk.NET - 10 minute micro-presentations

What do you look for in O/R Mappers for .NET?

jamauss — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:28:00 GMT

I figured I might as well write another feedback gathering post for O/R Mappers for .NET while I'm at it. Once the first draft of my .NET Charting Component guide goes off to the editor I'll start focusing on the O/R Mapper for .NET Guide. So - any experiences evaluating O/R Mappers for .NET and what features sold you on one in particular (if that was the case). I know that asking questions similar to "which O/R Mapper is best" often ignite religious debates in some comment threads so if you can please - keep from turning comments here into that. I'm looking for objective opinions and opinions backed with actual experience.

What do you look for in .NET Charting Components?

jamauss — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:20:00 GMT

As some of you might remember hearing, I'm writing a How-To-Select Guide on .NET Charting Components. My first draft deadline is approaching fast - this Wednesday actually. I've written most of the content but I thought maybe I could collect some valuble feedback here on my blog also since the primary readership is developers.

If you've ever had to evaluate and/or purchase a .NET charting component before, and you'd like to spend a moment commenting on your experience, I'd be very interested to hear what you have to say. I'm not really looking for "I used product X because product Y was a real loser" type feedback - since it's likely I've already come to a conclusion on each product. I'm just trying to find out what your decision points were or which features really sold you on any particular component.

How-To-Select Guides - A Great Idea

jamauss — Thu, 09 Jun 2005 20:46:00 GMT

Some of you have probably seen some mentions recently of Xtras new How-To-Select Guides popping up here and there. Well, here's another one. I believe these guides are going to be really useful, to developers or anyone else that has to go figure out which components have the features they require for their software. I know I've had to do it on several occasions in my career. It seems like just as you've settled on which component you are going to go with, you buy it, ....and then discover a component that would have been better suited for the job. These guides should help keep that from happening to you. I can't think of anyone better suited to run something like this than a company like Xtras, either.

I'm enthused to have been asked by Mike Gunderloy (who's probably been the editor for half the articles I've ever written) to author a couple of these guides. I'm currently working on a guide for "How To Select a Charting Component for .NET" which is going to feature around 30 different charting component vendors in the .NET space. I'll also be authoring a guide on "How To Select an Object-Relational Mapping Tool for .NET" which I think will be fun to write. If you want to get a feel for what the guides are all about , have a look at the first guide on .NET PDF Components.

In addition to writing some of the guides himself, Mike G. has assembled a talented group of folks to help write these guides, including Jay Kimble and Don Kiely. I'd also like to congratulate Mike Schinkel on recently publishing the first of many guides recently. Mike S. has been at TechEd this week getting vendors to sign up to have their products included in the guides. I found it pretty funny that Jay has been "fantasizally" (is that a word?) there with him helping push the guides. Funny stuff.

UPDATE: It appears that Raymond Lewallen is also an author....awesome.