Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET : ASP.NET

Work With .NET Projects From a Network Share

interscape — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:03:41 GMT

I've tried a couple different methods from a bunch of different websites, and none of them worked. The only thing that worked for me was this post from the Microsoft Knowledge Base. It is the only place on the internet that gives the proper caspol command for issuing Full Trust to a network share. It is:

Drive:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\caspol.exe -m -ag 1 -url "file:////\\computername\sharename\*" FullTrust -exclusive on

Note the 4 slashes after the "file" and then the 2 backslashes for the full network path. Trust me, it will save you a lot of headaches.

Expression Web Doesn't Do Non-GAC'd 3rd Party Controls

interscape — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 02:19:04 GMT

This is just ridiculous. First Expression web is not for developers, then it goes great with Visual Studio (which is for developers), and now they don't do custom controls that aren't signed and installed in the GAC. What the hell? Did Microsoft have ANY idea what kind of deployment NIGHTMARE that would be? What if the people on your team are writing their own controls that are updated frequently. You mean that the designer has to know enough about the GAC to be constantly pulling the BINs from source control and copy them to the Windows\Assembly folder? Have they not ever dealt with Assembly Hell before?

I'd really like to see what other component vendors and developers have to say about this. Seriously, I don't know what MS is smoking over there, but this whole Expression Web thing is really starting to feel half-assed. I never thought the DevDiv could botch something this badly.

ASP.NET: Authenticated but not Authorized

interscape — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 08:13:42 GMT

Does anyone know if there is a built-in way to trigger the Membership/Roles/FormsAuth system to redirect to a separate page if the current user is authenticated, but not authorized to view the current page? Right now I'm handling Application.Authenticate and checking UrlAuthorizationModule.CheckUrlAccessForPrincipal, but I'm not sure that's the best way, and it's not as clean as I'd like. Thanks!

CommunityServer 2.1 Goodies

interscape — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 09:42:00 GMT

I recently whipped out a few CommunityServer 2.1 projects that I thought I should get the word out on:

CommunityServerStuff is going to be the package that I dump all my CS goodies into. The first two add-ons are RecycleBinJob, which is a CSJob that empties the deleted items post table on a regular basis; and ReferrerCleanupJob, which is a CSJob that deletes seach engine and social network trackbacks after a user-defined period. This is an expansion and rearchitecture of Keyvan Nayyeri's tips for optimizing your CS database.
TrackbackSpamCleanup... well, it does exactly what it's title says. It's an SQL query (based on the same code that ReferrerCleanupJob uses) that cleans up trackback spam and stray URLs leftover from .Text or CS 1.x upgrades.
Together, these utilities reduced my DB file from 510MB to 105MB (that's an 80% reduction!!!)
Finally, OpenSearchHandler is a DLL-free solution for adding support for searching your CS site from IE7. Just drop the file in the root of your app, make a quick change to your skin, and you're done! (Won't be that way for long tho... I intend to convert the code to C# so I can put it in my CommunityServerStuff package at some point in the near future)

That's about it! I've been neck-deep in Atlas/ASP.NET 2.0/.NET 3.0 development, so hopefully I'll be able to post some more developer tips & tricks soon. Take it easy!

Adding OpenSearch for your CommunityServer Site

interscape — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:45:00 GMT

So last night, I had this really random idea to create an OpenSearch Provider for LonghornBlogs.com. That way I could search my site from IE7's search box. In the process, I discovered that my search is broken there, so I decided to create them for several of the main Microsoft community sites instead:

Maybe Telligent will create an OpenSearch directory for all the CS communities out there. We'll have to wait and see. Anyways, if you want to write your own, I'll show you how!

Writing Your Own Provider:

Here's what a CS 2.0 OpenSearch provider looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Your Name Here</ShortName>
<Description>Your Description Here</Description>
<Url type="text/html" template="http://www.yoursitehere.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?q={searchTerms}&o=Relevance" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

When you form your URLs, make sure they are UrlEncoded first, or they'll throw an error.

Installing Your OpenSearch Provider:

You'll have to add a hyperlink to the provider on your website. Just use the following syntax for your link: <a href="#" onClick="window.external.AddSearchProvider("http://www.yoursitehere.com/yoursearchprovider.xml");">

That's it! It's really very simple. Of course, you can add a lot more information to your OpenSearch provider. Amazon's A9 has all the details.

Posting to weblogs.asp.net From Word 2007

interscape — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:04:00 GMT

Ever since Telligent updated weblogs.asp.net to CommunityServer 2.1, I’ve been anxious to try blogging from Word 2007. But the directions in the “Help” link in Word 2007 are incorrect. Fortunately, Chris Garrett already found the solution: the correct MetaBlog API URL is http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/metablog.ashx. Woo hoo!

Alternate SiteMapProviders and the SiteMapDataSource

interscape — Wed, 03 May 2006 20:26:00 GMT

I have a scenario where I think I've found a bug in the SiteMap API in ASP.NET 2.0. The scenario is this:

Create two separate .sitemap files in your application.
Create two SiteMapProvider references in the web.config file. Give them unique names and make one the default.
Create a new webpage. Drag a SiteMapDataSource control onto the page, and specify the name of the non-default SiteMapProvider in the "SiteMapProvider" property.
Drag a Menu control onto the page, and configure it to use the SiteMapDataSource control on the page.

There are two things that I see happening, and I'm wondering ig anyone else sees this:

At Design-time, the Menu will bring up data from the default provider, regardless of the provider you specify.
At runtime, the Menu will not populate with any data.

Is this an issue just with my setup, or are other people seeing this? I dug through the code in Reflector, and I think I found a bug, but I want to make sure I'm not the only one experienceing this first.

The Day is Finally Here!!!

interscape — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:49:00 GMT

It's Official! GenX.NET 3.0 is complete and has been released to the public! Check it out today at http://www.genxdotnet.com. GenX.NET is the first DTS engine available for the .NET Framework. Using an application architecture that will be used heavily in ASP.NET “Whidbey”, GenX.NET 3.0 is extremely extensible, while still being simple to use. It features 100% integration with ADO.NET, and supports ANY ADO.NET Data Provider. You can format and output data into a variery of ways, and GenX.NET has the most features for your buck of any other component available.

The download comes with a built-in 30-day trial, comprehensive documentation, and a detailed sample application.

The first 25 customers will also get a free copy of our next server control, due out next week. More details on that after PDC. So what are you waiting for? Try it out and tell me what you think.

Are YOU In Design Mode?

interscape — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 19:51:00 GMT

Scott Hansleman talks about page instantiation while designing ASPX pages in the IDE [via Daniel Fisher]. Good stuff.

Calendar Server Control

interscape — Fri, 08 Aug 2003 15:05:00 GMT

Yesterday I posted about needing a ASP.NET Calendar Server Control. Well, I found the greatest control ever written. Seriously. You can check it out here. I don't really think I need to say anything else. I can thing of like a half-million uses for this thing.