Sonu Kapoor's WebLog

Moved Blog

SonuKapoor — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 18:34:00 GMT

I have finally managed to move my blog to my own website, which I am still building. The blog however is already fully functional. Please update your bookmark to the new location. I really appreciate all the experience, which I got from weblogs.asp.net. Thanks so much.

Have you heard of Snippet Compiler?

SonuKapoor — Sat, 08 Jan 2005 05:00:00 GMT

Just saw this cool tool called "Snippet Compiler" and thought you would be interested in. Always wanted to compile quickly some code snippets without opening Visual Studio .NET and creating a new project? This small and easy to use tool lets you create such snippets with the benefit of having intellisense, compiler errors, warning, tooltips etc. . Here is a screenshot how it looks like:

Downlod it here.

Sonu Kapoor

Manage TV viewing via XML

SonuKapoor — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 15:25:00 GMT

Ever heard of viewing TV via XML?

XMLTV is a set of utilities to manage your TV viewing. They work with TV listings stored in the XMLTV format, which is based on XML. The idea is to separate out the backend (getting the listings) from the frontend (displaying them for the user), and to implement useful operations like picking out your favourite programmes as filters that read and write XML documents.

Sonu

Currency Conversion rates via a Web Service

SonuKapoor — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 00:12:00 GMT

Some time ago I found the following Web Service, which provides the currency conversion rates for free. The WebSite also provides some other very nice services. I thought it would be interesting to bookmark that one. What kind of Web Service do you use to do the currency conversion?

Sonu

Add a JavaScript Confirm function when deleting a row from a datagrid

SonuKapoor — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 15:41:00 GMT

Lets say your datagrid looks like this:

<asp:datagrid OnItemDataBound="dg1_OnItemDataBound"...>
<Columns>
<asp:TemplateColumn>
<ItemTemplate>
  <asp:Button runat="server" Text="Delete" id="btnDelete" CommandName="Delete" CausesValidation="false"></asp:Button>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateColumn>
...
</asp:datagrid>

And in your ItemDataBound of the datagrid you just need to add this:

Sub dg1_OnItemDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As DataGridItemEventArgs)
If e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.Item Or e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.AlternatingItem Then
    CType(e.Item.Cells(0).FindControl("btnDelete"), Button).Attributes.Add("onClick", "return confirm('Are you sure to delete this item?')")
  End If
End Sub

Sonu

added TopXML.com to the legend list.

SonuKapoor — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 20:10:00 GMT

TopXML.com is one of the companies I work for since a while and now they have been added as a legend of the XSLT community to the <XSLT:Blog />. I am sure that I dont need to explain what TopXML.com is about. If you dont know TopXML.com, I recommend that you take a look and you surely will understand why <XSLT:Blog/> added it. A short <snip> of what <XSLT:Blog/> thinks about TopXML.

"As if I needed any more reasons to make myself look like a fool it seems I forgot to add one *VERY* obvious entry into my last post. To try and avoid any further embarrassment would like to welcome TopXML.com to the "Legends of the XSLT Community" section of this blog. If not obvious please visit TopXML.com and you will quickly understand why TopXML.com should be considered a legend of the XSLT community. TopXML has been promoting the use of XSLT for a very long time providing everything from sample code to complete applications built in XSLT to the development communities abroad."

Sonu

New Design on XMLPitStop

SonuKapoor — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:58:00 GMT

Just in the case you haven't recognized yet. XMLPitStop has a new design and a cleaner structure. Furthermore we have an admin section which allows us to manage articles and code snippets easily. Feel free to submit your thoughts and ideas to headgeek@xmlpitstop.com .

Sonu

Cast from type 'DBNull' to type 'String' is not valid.

SonuKapoor — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 23:00:00 GMT

I have seen this question many times in the ASP.NET forums and thought that it would be a good idea to blog about.
When you are working with functions in the HTML of your DataGrid and passing the value (which can be also NULL) from the database to a function, which accepts a string, then you will get such an error.

Cast from type 'DBNull' to type 'String' is not valid.

To get this working you will have to pass the value as an object. That means the function must simply accept it as an object instead of a string. Something like this:

<asp:datagrid id="datagrid".....>
<Columns>
<asp:TemplateColumn ...>
<ItemTemplate>
<%# DoSomething(Container.DataItem("TheValue")) %>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateColumn>
</Columns>
</asp:datagrid>

And in your Codebehind:

function public DoSomething(Dim obj as Object)
If not IsDBNull(obj) then
' Do the processing here...
End If
end function

Sonu

XML Reblogger passed 1000 posts in nearly one month

SonuKapoor — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:19:00 GMT

The Reblogger which was published on Thursday, November 11, 2004 and started initially with 127 posts has passed today Thurday, 16 December 2004 1000 posts in nearly one month. This is so great. Interested in Reblogger for your own WebSite?

Sonu

XMLPitstop is looking for Authors

SonuKapoor — Thu, 09 Dec 2004 17:29:00 GMT

David Silverlight the headgeek of XMLPitStop.com told me that he is looking for authors who want to contribute articles on www.XMLPitStop.com. If you have any ideas for an article and would like to publish it on XMLPitStop.com then you can contact either me via the contact page or directly David Silverlight (headgeek@xmlpitstop.com)

Sonu

Edit a Nested Datagrid

SonuKapoor — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 05:43:00 GMT

While working on a nested datagrid, I had the problem that I could not edit the nested datagrid. When I pressed the edit button in the nested datagrid nothing happend. After searching on google I found the following KB article which resolved this problem.

BUG: When you click Edit for the child DataGrid control, nothing happens in Visual Studio .NET 2003

Sonu

My Reblogger on TopXML

SonuKapoor — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 23:20:00 GMT

I wrote a reblogger for TopXML which aggregates XML blogs and news. You can check it out here. It has already 127 xml news. Here is the explaination from TopXML:

"Reblogger is a free aggregator service provided by TopXML. We collect XML blog items twice a day from around the web, so that you can view all the most interesting and most useful news right here in our reblogger. Enjoy"

TopXML contracted me to write this software because of previous my experience in other projects Over the next two weeks I built this system. I am very proud of the Reblogger, because I actually like using it - I need a good service as a source of news about the happenings of the XML world. If you require something built for your website, I am available for ASP/ASPX/.NET contract programming. Please do not hesitate to contact me.

Update: ~~RSS for the Reblogger is comming soon.~~ Get the RSS feed here.

Sonu

Another RSS article from another author

SonuKapoor — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 22:22:00 GMT

Few days later after ASPToday published my article about RSS, they published another cool article which shows how you can create a RSS user control. I know there are already few of them out there, but this one is a control, which scrolls the RSS news in an IFRAME. A very nice article.

Read the complete article here.

Sonu

XmlSS.NET Spreadsheet Component

SonuKapoor — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 01:18:00 GMT

New article on CodeGuru, which shows ways to work with Excel spreadsheets through the use of XML.

Read the complete article here.

Sonu

Sharing Web Content Using RSS

SonuKapoor — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 17:32:00 GMT

My latest article on ASPToday.com

"In this article Sonu Kapoor will show you how to use RSS to improve visibility of the content on your website. He'll examine the XML schema for an RSS feed and will see how a feed can be added to a website. This article will also examine a couple of the popular tools available for viewing RSS feeds. The accompanying downloadable sample code illustrates a website with an RSS feed that is automatically updated using ASP.NET code whenever data in an underlying database is changed through an administrative user interface."

Read the complete article here.

Sonu