Kevin Isom

Testing Web Services remotely

kevinisom — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:48:20 GMT

I hate it when I forget something. I had one of the guys on my team today asked me how to invoke a web service remotely as he was getting an error. Well I knew right away what the problem was. But could remember the solution so I had to look and now I'm gonna put it here so it'll be easier to find next time.

   1:  <system.web>

   2:      <webServices>

   3:          <protocols>

   4:              <add name="HttpGet"/>

   5:              <add name="HttpPost"/>

   6:          </protocols>

   7:      </webServices>

   8:  </system.web>

Now I don't recommend this for production, but it's pretty useful for testing.

Web Development with Internet Explorer

kevinisom — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:01:00 GMT

Firebug rocks. Nothing, I mean nothing beats it for debug web pages. But what do you do for problems specific to IE (most notably IE 6) Here are a list of tools I use to help cause telling the user to get a real browser is not a solution

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

This toolbar provides some of the features of firebug.

XRAY

Is a bookmarklet that let's you see information about elements on a page.

Companion.JS

An javascript debugger for IE

This may not be free in the future. Debug Bar from the same guy is also a very useful tool, but it's not free for professional use but probably worth the 59 euro if you do a lot of work with IE.

And finally something while not useful for debugging but damn useful in its own right is the Inline Search for IE.

Hope this helps somebody out.

Visual Basic.Net ain't half bad

kevinisom — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:49:29 GMT

There I said it.

I'm a C# guy. Now about 4 years when I started with .Net I started writing in VB.Net but I quickly decided to move C#. This, despite having spent the 3+ years prior working in ASP Classic. After a little bit of C# I quickly adopted the typical C# snobbish opinion of VB. For no good reason mind you, just cause it was different.

My how things change.

I've joined a VB team and instead of trying to make the team change to C# I figured I'd just get back to VB. Also we do a lot of work with XML so it got me looking into the VB 9.0 XML features and I found that you can do things like this:

   1:  Imports <xmlns:ns="http://contacts">

2:

   3:  Dim contact1 As XElement = _

   4:      <contact>

   5:        <name>Joe Bloggs</name>

   6:        <phone type="home">09-555-0144</phone>

   7:        <phone type="mobile">021-555-0145</phone>

   8:      </contact>

Okay, nifty and all, but what do you do from there...How about this?

   1:  Dim phoneTypes As XElement = _

   2:    <phoneTypes>

   3:        <%= From phone In contacts...<phone> _

   4:            Select <type><%= phone.@type %></type> _

   5:        %>

   6:    </phoneTypes>

And that will give you the following XML

<phoneTypes>
    <type>home</type>
    <type>mobile</type>
</phoneTypes>

That's rather cool and really useful with some of the stuff I'll be working on.

Check out the Overview of LINQ to XML in Visual Basic for more details

Now, I still want to say I'm a C# guy, but I think the snickering at the mention of VB stops now.

Visual Basic.Net and NUnit Gotcha

kevinisom — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:41:39 GMT

I like the NUnit 2.4 Constraint based syntax. So In my new role I am having to implement Unit Testing so I decided on going with NUnit to begin with despite my preference for MbUnit. But once I got started writing my tests, I discover Is is a keyword in VB (I'm more of a C# person, but hey I'm no language bigot). I kinda freak out a little. Did I do something wrong? Forget to add something? Google a bit and still no joy. Then I remember the code examples installed with NUnit and have a look and what do you know? Is is now Iz in VB. Not exactly as clear as Is but you gotta do what you gotta do. So now in VB a Unit Test looks like this

   1:  Imports NUnit.Framework

   2:  Imports NUnit.Framework.SyntaxHelpers

   3:  <TestFixture()> _

   4:  Public Class MyVIsualBasicSampleTests

5:

   6:      <Test()> _

   7:      Public Sub TestBlankForSyntax()

   8:          Assert.That(something.IsSomething(), Iz.False)

   9:      End Sub

10:

  11:      <Test()> _

  12:      Public Sub AnotherSampleTestForSomethingElse()

  13:          Assert.That(something.IsSomethingElse(), Iz.True)

  14:      End Sub

15:

  16:  End Class

And there you go.

Web Application Projects and Profiles

kevinisom — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:05:17 GMT

So, I'm working on a Web Application Project in Visual Studio 2008 and I realize I don't have a strongly typed Profile object...So I Google around and find that this a Problem in Visual Studio 2005 and that Microsoft didn't fix the problem in VS 2008. Needless to say I was a little unimpressed. But I also found the Web Profile Builder at the MSDN Code Gallery. I followed the instructions here and was away running.

Hiding a Popup Panel with JavaScript

kevinisom — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:34:00 GMT

Had a instance where I needed to close the Popup Control with JavaScript

   1:  <ajax:PopupControlExtender ID="pceShowPanel" runat="server"

   2:      TargetControlID="showPanel"

   3:      PopupControlID="popupPanel"

   4:      BehaviorID="popupBehavior"

   5:      />

So with that on your page just hide it with hidePopup().

   1:  function Hide(){

   2:      $find('popupBehavior').hidePopup()

   3:  }

Of course you can show the popup as well with the showPopup() method. The real trick here is the $find shortcut method. The FindComponent method does just that and get's the component in this case the PopupExtender and allows you to call the methods associated with that control.

Setting Form Values Automatically with SubSonic

kevinisom — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:04:46 GMT

Tedious coding sucks. SubSonic saves lots of time. But I want it to save me more. So I've started working on a method that will fill out the controls for me so I don't have to. It's simple really. I just new() up a the model I will use and pass it to my method along with the UserControl I have my form elements in.

   1:  public void SetupForm<T>(Control form, T activeRecord )

   2:      where T : AbstractRecord<T> ,new()

   3:  {

   4:      TableSchema.TableColumnSettingCollection settings = activeRecord.GetColumnSettings();

   5:      foreach (TableSchema.TableColumnSetting setting in settings)

   6:      {

   7:          Control settingControl = form.FindControl(setting.ColumnName);

   8:          if (settingControl is TextBox)

   9:              ((TextBox)settingControl).Text =

  10:                  activeRecord.GetColumnValue<string>(setting.ColumnName);

  11:          if (settingControl is DropDownList)

  12:              ((DropDownList)settingControl).SelectedValue =

  13:                  activeRecord.GetColumnValue<string>(setting.ColumnName);

  14:      }

  15:  }

The key thing is to make sure you have called EnsureChildControls() before calling this method.

So in my control the code looks like

   1:  int issueId = SubSonic.Sugar.Web.QueryString<int>("issue");

   2:  if (issueId != 0)

   3:  {

   4:      EnsureChildControls();

   5:      Issue issue = new Issue(issueId);

   6:      //BasePage inherits from System.Web.UI.Page

   7:      BasePage.SetupForm(this, issue);

   8:  }

Now this is pretty rough and more than anything a proof of concept so your mileage may vary. But I figure this is a good place to start

Setting the enum from it's name

kevinisom — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:55:46 GMT

I've changed this a bit due to some comments

   1:  enum Directions

   2:  {

   3:      Up,

   4:      Down,

   5:      Left,

   6:      Right

   7:  }

   8:  void DoSomething()

   9:  {

10:

  11:      Directions currentState =(Directions) Enum.Parse(typeof(Directions), "Down");

  12:  }

Grabbing Data from a GridView on PostBack

kevinisom — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:55:25 GMT

Have you ever wanted to grab bulk data on a grid view? It's actually not that hard at all. Set the System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView.DataKeys Property on the Grid, then on the postback event iterate over the grid like so.

   1:  foreach (GridViewRow row in gridView.Rows)

   2:  {

   3:      DataKey data = gridView.DataKeys[row.RowIndex];

   4:      int Id = (int)data.Values["Id"];

   5:      TextBox myControl = row.FindControl("mycontrol") as TextBox;

   6:      //do something with the data

   7:  }

And on your GridView add the DataKeys Property

   1:  <asp:GridView ID="myGrid" runat="server"

   2:       DataSourceID="myDataSource"

   3:       DataKeyNames="Id" >

SubSonic LoadFromPost

kevinisom — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:01:00 GMT

I think SubSonic is simply amazing. It has saved me so much time and effort of writing. One little trick that it's got is the LoadFromPost method the Models inherit from the SubSonic.AbstractRecord<T> class.

What LoadFromPost does is iterate over the the Request.Forms collection and matches the name of the form element with the corresponding property for your Model. So what that means is no more of this.

 1: Product prod = new Product();

 2: prod.Name = name.Text;

 3: ....//More code setting the properties based on the form

 4: prod.Save

So all you now have to do is this

 1: Product prod = new Product

 2: prod.LoadFromPost();//this loads up all the properties.

 3: prod.Save();

Anything that saves time is a good thing, and nothing sucks more than writing tedious databinding code. Another advantage is that you don't need to use Server controls just plain html tags so you don't have to worry about ASP.Net adding all the extra naming container bits as well and that'll play nicely with any JavaScript or CSS that uses the id of an html tag.

Update to Ajax control toolkit breaks autocomplete

kevinisom — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:58:22 GMT

I recently updated an application to the latest version of the Ajax Control Toolkit and my AutoComplete Extender broke. It was returning the list fine. but in the dropdown the only values showed were undefined. Not cool. But after some research I changed the web service that returns the values to use the new AutoComplete Item

First Version

 1: [WebMethod]

 2: public string[] AutoComplete( string prefixText, int count )

 3: {

 4:  List<string> results = new List<string>();

 5:  IDataReader reader = DataLayer.AutoCompleteLookup(prefixText).GetReader();

 6:  while (reader.Read())

 7:  {

 8:  results.Add(reader[0].ToString());

 9:  }

10:

 11:  return results.ToArray();

 12: }

That worked fine, and I have a feeling that if the service wasn't returning numeric values like 01-145 that it might still be fine, but the service was returning values like 01-145 so I had to do this

 1: [WebMethod]

 2: public string[] AutoComplete( string prefixText, int count )

 3: {

 4:  List<string> results = new List<string>();

 5:  IDataReader reader = DataLayer.AutoCompleteLookup(prefixText).GetReader();

 6:  while (reader.Read())

 7:  {

 8:  results.Add(

 9:  AutoCompleteExtender.CreateAutoCompleteItem

 10:  (

 11:  reader[0].ToString(),

 12:  reader[0].ToString()

 13:  )

 14:  );

 15:  }

 16:  return results.ToArray();

 17: }

After that changed the AutoComplete worked again.

Now that got me wondering what I could do with the AutoComplete Item that comes back. So I found a post by Phani Raj. The Extender Control has a property OnClientItemSelected (actually the extender has 9 OnClient events) so you could do something like this.

 1: <ajax:AutoCompleteExtender ID="AutoComlete" runat="server"

 2:  TargetControlID="lookupBox"

 3:  ServicePath="~/services/Lookup.asmx"

 4:  ServiceMethod="AutoComplete"

 5:  OnClientItemSelected="AutoComlete_Selected" />

6:

 7: <script language="javascript">

 8:  function AutoComlete_Selected( source, eventArgs ) {

 9:  $get("hiddenField").value = eventArgs.get_value();

 10:  //eventArgs also has .get_text()

 11:  }

 12: </script>

Hope this helps someone

Custom Parameter for a DataSource

kevinisom — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:35:32 GMT

While using a cookie parameter for an ObjectDataSource I discovered that you get the whole cookie, not the value from a key....So instead of my method getting passed the value, it was getting passed key=value. Needless to say I was a little miffed. But I quickly discovered how easy it is to create my own custom data parameter.

    [ToolboxData("<{0}:CookieParameter ></{0}:CookieParameter>")] 
    [System.Drawing.ToolboxBitmap(typeof(Parameter))] 
    public class CookieParameter : Parameter 
    { 
        private string _cookieKey; 
        public string Key 
        { 
            get { return _cookieKey; } 
            set { _cookieKey = value; } 
        } 
        private string _cookie; 
        public string Cookie 
        { 
            get { return _cookie; } 
            set { _cookie = value; } 
        }    
        public CookieParameter() : base() 
        { 
        } 
        public CookieParameter(string name, object value) : base(name) 
        { 
        } 
        public CookieParameter(string name, TypeCode type, object value) : base(name, type) 
        { 
        } 
        protected CookieParameter(CookieParameter original) 
            : base(original) 
        { 
        } 
        protected override object Evaluate(HttpContext context, Control control) 
        { 
            if ((context != null) && (context.Session != null)) 
            { 
                return context .Request.Cookies[Cookie].Values.Get(Key); 
            } 
            return null; 
        } 

        protected override Parameter Clone() 
        { 
            return new CookieParameter(this); 
        } 
    } 

Then in the data source control just do this

<asp:ObjectDataSource ID="MyDataSource" runat="server"> 
    <SelectParameters> 
        <Data:CookieParameter Cookie="cookie" Name="myParameter" Type="Object" Key="cookieKey"  /> 
    </SelectParameters> 
  
</asp:ObjectDataSource> 

SubSonic, ObjectDataSource, Paging, and you!

kevinisom — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:35:32 GMT

SubSonic is such a time saver. Fresh out of the box it gives you so much goodness that it makes you wonder how you developed without it. However one feature I find lacking is that it doesn't have a paging method from the get go. However it's easy enough to implement paging with SubSonic.

The trick is you have to created two methods to get the paging to work. The drawback to using the ObjectDataSource for paging is that the GridView doesn't take an output parameter as the record count. So what do you do to take advantage of the SubSonic goodness? First create the select method and the select count in the controller class.

   1:  [DataObjectMethod( DataObjectMethodType.Select, false )]

   2:  public MyCollection FetchAllPaged(int start, int pageLength)

   3:  {

   4:      int startIndex;

   5:      if(start ==0)

   6:      {

   7:          startIndex = 1;

   8:      }

   9:      else

  10:      {

  11:          startIndex = start / pageLength + 1;

  12:      }

  13:      MyCollection coll = new MyCollection();

  14:      Query qry = new Query( My.Schema );

  15:      qry.PageSize = pageLength;

  16:      qry.PageIndex = startIndex;

  17:      coll.LoadAndCloseReader( qry.ExecuteReader() );

  18:      return coll;

  19:  }

  20:  public int FetchAllCount()

  21:  {

  22:      Query qry = new Query( My.Schema );

  23:      return qry.GetCount( My.Columns.MyId );

  24:  }

The trick to remember is that the ObjectDataSource passes passes in the count of the items but the paging method exposed by SubSonic expects the actual page number. This means that if your PageSize is 10 changing to the second page the start is 20, but SubSonic expects 2.

   1:  <asp:GridView ID="TheGrid" runat="server"

   2:      AllowPaging="True"

   3:      DataSourceID="MyDataSource"

   4:      PageSize="10" />

   5:  <asp:ObjectDataSource ID="MyDataSource" runat="server"

   6:      SelectMethod="FetchAllPaged"

   7:      TypeName="MyController"

   8:      SelectCountMethod="FetchAllCount"

   9:      StartRowIndexParameterName="start"

  10:      MaximumRowsParameterName="pageLength"

  11:      EnablePaging="True"

  12:  />

Sorting a generic list

kevinisom — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:35:32 GMT

One of the nice features of System.Collection.Generics.List is it is able to sort on the go with a IComparable, and you can do that simply with an anonomous method
This is simply done like so.

   1:  List<Attribute> attributes = Entity.Get();

   2:  attributes.Sort

   3:  (

   4:      delegate( Attribute firstAttribute, Attribute secondAttribute )

   5:      {

   6:          return firstAttribute.Index.CompareTo( secondAttribute.Index );

   7:      }

   8:  );