'shortcuts'

OK, this is a super-basic one for the command prompt - to get a recursive listing of subdirectories

C:\My Folder\>dir /s /ad /b > output.txt

back to work...

Debugging 'old school'

This post about Script Debugging in IE prompted me to create my own little collection of links on debugging, since I find myself currently working on a project that uses 'old school' ASP and SQL written outside VisualStudio...

Most useful is this detailed instructions document [.DOC] (on gotdotnet) or this short doc.

Then there's the lower-level stuff:
Fiddler for IE allows you to record, monitor, replay and otherwise manipulate the HTTP traffic between IE and web servers.

And these IE DOM inspectors can help to debug client-side issues by letting you view IE's understanding of the Document Object Model it has rendered.

Of course Firefox already provides features and/or extensions to do these things and more!

While we're on the subject of debugging, here's a tip for SQL Debugging after XP SP2.

About Cassini

If you ever installed Web Matrix (0.5 or 0.6 - it will never make version 1...)
you will already know what Cassini is... a lightweight C# web server that enables ASP.NET applications to be run without IIS.

MSDN explains Client-side Hosting with Cassini and how Cassini is used in MS-CRM.

"What use is that?", you ask... well despite the fact that it appears to be just a cute open source project, Microsoft has implemented it (well, some form of it) in Visual Studio 2005 as the primary way for developers to run ASP.NET applications without having to install IIS.

You can also use it, as Scott Hanselman has, to cobble together an NUnit ASP.NET tester using Cassini...

FYI, the name "Cassini" sprung from the code name for Web Matrix (which was "Saturn")... Cassini is of course on of Saturn's moons. More code-names decoded here.

More on Ajax

Although it hasn't taken the ASP.NET world by storm (yet), the term Ajax (and the underlying javascript-xml technology) is certainly being discussed more frequently as a viable design option. Whereas previously javascript might have been ignored in favour of Validation Controls (and the occasional pop-up window), Ajax (along with 'implementations' in Gmail, Maps.Google, etc) seems to have elevated the concept of dynamic apps into acceptability.

Since the same idea will be part of ASP.NET 2.0 (Script Callback) it kinda makes sense; but thankfully you don't have to wait until then to give it a try, as quite a few resources are appearing to get you using it now:

• Ajax.NET Blog


• AJAX WAS Here - Part 3 : Auto Complete TextBox


• XMLHttpRequest & Ajax Working Examples


• Implementing AJAX Using ASP.NET 1.1
  


• Processing Long Running Tasks With Asynchronous Handlers and XMLHTTP

Have fun

Agile and Database Design

One of the least-often-mentioned aspects of Agile Development (IMO) are the challenges involved in database change management, described in Martin Fowler's
Evolutionary Database Design.

Martin states "One of the most valuable pieces of automation is a simple set of scripts for common database tasks" - but I'm not so sure that there is a simple way to accomplish all that in a foolproof manner.

It's definitely do-able in a team of disciplined developers with good SQL knowledge, experience and dedication to writing DDL, DML and understanding when they're making a destructive change. But what about teams of different skill levels (particularly in SQL), very large databases where mulitple delta-changes, when applied, will take HOURS to run (ie. longer than a maintenance window), etc...?

Not that I have a solution right now - but why isn't it a more visible "problem" - what is everyone doing to solve this problem - manual processes?????

[EDIT 9-May-05] Peter Hancock's Continuous Database Integration article describes a novel, NAnt-based approach; but it still requires a lot of 'thought' to ensure it always works...
[EDIT 15-May-05] Unit Testing the Data Access Layer covers the 'related' issue of how to test the database...

Issues with dynamically-added ASCX

Explaining to someone why dynamically added Controls (or DataGrid columns, for that matter) can't be accessed after postback can be difficult, requiring understanding of the entire page lifecycle, the difference between the 'declarative' Control-tree and the 'run-time' one, how statelessness affects the two and why Viewstate doesn't solve the problem.

Depending on what you're trying to do, there are various workarounds including accessing the Request.Form collection directly to retrieve inputs, without accessing 'the control'; however this can be fraught with INamingContainer-induced control-name issues (see Scott Watermasysk's Implementing Dynamic ItemTemplates).

This blog on Adding controls to ASP.NET page at runtime and the Dynamically Created Controls in ASP.NET helps show the correct approach - re-adding the controls to the page before accessing them.

The MSDN page An Extensive Examination of User Controls - How User Controls Are Processed also offers some useful insight, as does the Control Execution Lifecycle

IMO every ASP.NET developer should understand and be able to describe this solution, even if they can't recite the implementation specifics without a quick Google!

Forecasting the future...

OK, I haven't posted for a while... been busy!

Having heard (over and over) about how cool Master Pages is in ASP.NET 2.0, we got sick of waiting and are going to implement the Microsoft-published Master Pages sample from 2002. The funny thing is, I had already used that on a project way back then - but before I really fully understood the Page class and ASP.NET internals... you'll see a post of mine on that www.asp.net page - and I clearly haven't yet learned about Control.ClientID. D'oh! Removing the INamingContainer attribute seemed like a good idea at the time :)

Actually, we'll probably use the MasterPages: Improved Version by Paul Wilson anyway.

As for the post title - Paul was spot on: "MasterPages is the most flexible and easiest to use of Page Template solutions, and since it was created by Microsoft it will likely someday be in ASP.NET itself."

Precompile ASPX websites with a custom HttpHandler

Thanks to Joni Zhang for the code sample upon which I've based my own Precompile.axd handler to expose any compiler errors in my ASPX pages before a user sees them.

This Excellent article on the ASPX compilation process, debug status and ASP.NET Temporary Files should be read and understood by all ASP.NET developers!

Ajax: Asynchronous JavaScript + XML

Dare Obasanjo's post 'responding' to an article discussing a new approach to web applications that we at Adaptive Path have been calling Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML
is a fun read. I'm not really for or against people making up buzzwords, but a common language is always useful to aid understanding, and to me Ajax (if you're aware of it) does communicate more than his suggested "instead of Ajax, 'XML and script'"... (and Robert Scoble agrees)

Anyway, I was specifically researching information about using XmlHttpRequest ? after reading about an XmlHttpValidator for ASP.NET and Script Callbacks.

Finally - here's a collection of related sample stuff:
Presentation slides on 'Chubby Clients' by Anders Noras, info on XMLHttpRequest & Ajax-Based Applications
and an ASP.NET example from 2002, long before the 'Ajax' tag was invented!

Netscape Version Guide and Timeline

A nice bit of history, for those who have forgotten (or never knew) what life was like before IE (before HTML tables, before graphical browsing at all -- remember Lynx?)

Netscape Version Guide and Timeline is a great little resource. Now I'm looking for similar info on Mosaic and IE...

ADO.NET 'reference'

OK, I admit it - I can never remember various different ADO objects/methods... sometimes I look up code I've written before, but these ADO.NET examples are a pretty good summary of the most common bits - and they're in context which is useful.

SQL Server - when STATIC is DYNAMIC

My head hurts... according to MSDN documentation on CURSORS:

“Forward-only: The rows are not retrieved from the database until they are fetched”

“Static: The complete result set of a static cursor is built in tempdb when the cursor is opened”

which seems mutually exclusive, but

“SQL Server considers both forward-only and scroll as options that can be applied to static, keyset-driven, and dynamic cursors.”

and finally

“When a database API cursor attribute or property is set to forward-only, SQL Server implements this as a forward-only dynamic cursor.”

so specifying STATIC FORWARD ONLY gets implemented as DYNAMIC FORWARD_ONLY (no tempdb)
and STATIC alone gets the tempdb copy you’re (presumably) after…

Forward-only Cursors

Static Cursors

John Howard, Blogger?

For those not in sunny Australia, John Howard is our very long-serving Prime Minister (yes, we're still a democracy, it just seems like he's PM for life...)

Anyway, this 'unofficial' John Howard Blog is bloody funny...

[Sorry, I'll blog something tech-related again soon...]

Scrolling tables, fixed headers

A common Html display problem in enterprise applications is presenting lots of tabular data. Users are 'used' to Excel tables where they can always see the column headers as they scroll down a list.

MSDN has a useful example of a scrolling table with fixed header using HTC. It's IE-specific (of course) but seems to be fairly easy to implement. This does pretty much all I need, for now.

However, ActiveWidgets Grid is an awesome Excel-like grid view with column and row headers, plus icon/tooltip support. It's "somewhat" cross browser too (IE, Mox, FF but not Opera, Safari) and if I was really wanting to impress someone this is the one I'd use. One downside is the population of the table via Javascript arrays, which I suspect makes it impossible to do rowspan/colspan tricks which I often need.

WYSIWYG Editors in DHTML

I can't count the number of projects where the user's have asked for a text-input area "just like Microsoft Word". Inevitably they also ask for some specific feature or function that means the last control I used is not quite right.

Here is a list (for future reference) of some of the open source alternatives: Open Source WYSIWYG Through-The-Web Editors.

Of course, there's always RichTextBox if you want to pay (and get support!).

p.s. blogging has slowed dramatically in this new job. Hopefully it'll be more regular in the new year!

Asia Earthquake/Tsunami Aid...

"The Australian public can help these aid agencies reach affected people by giving much needed cash donations to purchase and deliver urgently needed supplies. In kind donations of clothing, toys, blankets and food are NOT being collected as it is expensive to transport these goods overseas and they can be purchased more cost effectively either locally or regionally."

ACFID - Asia Earthquake

How to Help

Thank you

Australiana

This is a pretty cool site for travellers and Australians...
Know Your Australia
lots information including things you might not expect - such as language, food, humour and also The Man From Snowy River and other poems by Banjo Paterson.

OK, a bit off-topic...

Page Inheritance In ASP.NET

Page Inheritance In ASP.NET is a favourite topic of mine, and although I've implemented a similar model to this in the past, I like how Jon's written it up.

C# "using" Tricks

Interesting idea from whatever: Stupid "using" Tricks -- scroll down to WriteEndElement and the discussion on writing xmlWriter...

Xml Sucks...

Well, not really - but some people obviously think XML has some serious deficiencies.

Came across that link - a long read but interesting points-of-view - while searching for info on the iTunes (rocks!) Music Library XML file. I want to move info between two installs of iTunes (song ratings, # plays, etc) and thought hacking the XML file would be fairly easy. However, the XML file itself it weird and not what you'd expect from a semantically-rich XML syntax.
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Major Version</key><integer>1</integer>
<key>Minor Version</key><integer>1</integer>
<key>Application Version</key><string>4.6</string>
<key>Music Folder</key><string>file://localhost/F:/My%20iTunes/</string>
<key>Library Persistent ID</key><string>037D341EA9748F0D</string>
<key>Tracks</key>
<dict>
<key>136</key>
<dict>
<key>Track ID</key><integer>136</integer>
<key>Name</key><string>Evolution (Intro)</string>
<key>Artist</key><string>Bliss n Esso</string>
<key>Album</key><string>Flowers In The Pavement</string>
<key>Genre</key><string>Hip-Hop</string>
etc...

My first impression was that it was a pretty crappy XML implementation... so I jumped onto Google to see what others thought.

This article Playlist to XML had an interesting comment by Bob Ippolito:

>>"The plist format is nasty, whoever designed it really didn't know anything about XML."
>That's just totally wrong. XML Property Lists are a very unambiguous and simple serialization format. They're designed to be extremely simple and fast to parse (no attributes, etc.) because they're ubiquitous in OS X.

So maybe I was being too harsh on the format -- never jump to conclusions or make assumptions about technology! Try to anticipate the creator's goals rather than dumping on something because it doesn't fulfil yours. Here's Apple's doco fyi.

Anyway, the same blog has some useful code for transforming the iTunes format : Cleaning up iTunes plist XML. It's not quite what I want... but will get to that another time.