Was just thinking of trying something short and sweet and thought of trying out a snippet for extracting code from the entered url.
Following is the code have not declared the namespaces on top but used them directly in the code to bring more clarity on which namespace the object comes from.

The code is self explanatory so wont add any explanations over here..

<code>&lt;/// &lt;summary&gt;
/// Extracts the source from the url entered.
/// &lt;/summary&gt;
/// &lt;param name=&quot;url&quot;&gt;url to fetch the source from.&lt;/param&gt;
/// &lt;returns&gt;string: source for the url entered.&lt;/returns&gt;
public static string GetHtmlPageSource(string url)
{

System.IO.Stream st = null;
System.IO.StreamReader sr = null;

try
{
// make a Web request
System.Net.WebRequest req = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(url);

// get the response and read from the result stream
System.Net.WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse();
st = resp.GetResponseStream();
sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(st);
// read all the text in it
return sr.ReadToEnd();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
return string.Empty;
}
finally
{
// close the stream &amp; reader objects.
sr.Close();
st.Close();
}
}</code>

<strong>UPDATE:</strong>

If you need to authenticate the request use the following just before you make the request to read the source
<code>
// authenticate using the credentials passed for getting access to the page.
if (username != null &amp;&amp; password != null)
req.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential(username, password);
// get the response and read from the result stream
.
.
.
</code>

Exception handling and performance

The vanila try- catch statement:

try
{

// Execute the code for SQL
}

Catch(Exception Ex)
{

// Handle the exception.
}

In the above example the try catch encapsulates a piece of code executing some DB operations.
In case there is an exception thrown in the try block code the exception will be smartly catched in the catch block and can be processed and handled.

Catch working.

A Catch block is used as a catcher of exceptions. i.e A catch block will catch the exception or any child exceptions that are derived from the class.

try

{

// Execute the code
}

Catch(ArgumentException Ex)
{

// Handle the exception.
}

In the above case any exceptions from the ArgumentException class will be caught in the catch block this will also include any child exceptions of the ArgumentException such as ArgumentOutOfRangeException, ArgumentNullException etc. As these exception classes are derived from the parent class ArgumentException (Remember .NET classes have loads of base classes )

Now that its caught what to do?

A Million dollar question!!! In code reviews have seen developers writing a try catch block and catching the exceptions and doing nothing with it. Wake up!!!!!! guys an exception is a exceptional flow of the code.. ie the moment it comes in the exception block it means this wasn’t the expected flow so obviously we cant let it go silently unnoticed.

Of course we don’t navigate it back to the user , but we do need to log it, process it, pass it back to the calling method with more info etc so that the developer is aware of the exceptions that occurred.

When i say Pass it back to the calling method a qts arises in our mind.. if we have to pass it to the calling function why in the name of God do we need to catch it as if we dont catch it it will automatically get thrown back to the calling method!!!!!!.

Thats true completely true, but as a developer we need to understand the exact location of error, maybe we want to add more custom information to the exception and then pass it back to the calling method.

Lets take an example of a utility class you have written for processing some data, now since this is a class which will be providing service to the classes calling on it.It will have to give out details of the exception if any that it will face in the operations..

try

{
// Open file
// Process data
// Send confirmation mail

}Catch(Exception Ex)
{

Logger.WriteLog(”Exception: Method: ProcessData: Parameters: A = 4, b= “ABC”);
Throw new Exception(”Error occured in processing data MethodXYZ with parameters a = 4, b =”ABC”, ex);
}

The above try catch block will not only handle the exception thrown but also log it into the custom logger and then send a customized exception with the details as well as the stack trace for the exception.

Such detailed exception/debuggin output will not only help the developer pinpoint the exception source but also provide him the details of the object when the exception occured.

P.S Its not a good idea to create new exception class objects and send the existing exception through it as it has some performance issues so choose carefully.

Multiple Catch

In the above scenario it would have been better to even drill down to the exact exception type as we have 3 different piece of code

1) File operation
2) Data Processing
3) Email functionality

* Ideally all these 3 functionality should be in their separate methods for maintainability but for the purpose of this example had to club them together in 1 method.

try

{
// Open file
// Process data
// Send confirmation mail

}
Catch(IOExecption Ex)
{
// Perform catch handling for File input /output exceptions
}
Catch(SQLException Ex)
{
// Perform catch handling for DB exceptions
}
Catch(Exception Ex)
{
// Perform catch handling for general exceptions
}

Order of catch blocks and the importance behind it.

We can very well have multiple catch blocks to handle specific exceptions and process them in specific ways, but in such a case such as the above the order of catch blocks holds lot of importance in the way the catch blocks will be functioning.

Care needs to be taken to see that the most specific catch blocks should be on top of the generic exception catch blocks. inshort the derived exception class catch should be on top of the parent exception class.
Please Note: Exception is the parent of all the other exception classes, hence the catch block for exception should be the last

Before we move on to the last part of exception handling need to mention the last catch block which will take care of any exception

try
{
// code
}
Catch
{
}

Why did .NET give this class? when we already have Exception which is the parent class for all exceptions?? Well the answer is simple Exception class is the parent class for all the exceptions that are thrown through managed code or rather .NET code. what about the code which might throw exception ie not written in .NET maybe a COM component, C++, code ? In such a case we can use the above catch block.This block however due to lack of the exception class/object will not provide us with any information on the exception.Its only useful for making sure no exceptions get through.

Finally Block

The last part of try catch is the finally. It should be like a inseparable trio try-catch-finally block.
As we have seen till now incase there is any error the code execution halts at the error code statement and the execution gets thrown into the catch block.

Now incase we had opened a Database connection / File / etc and inbetween the processing of the connection the exception occurs the execution will be thrown to the exception block and in turn the code for closing of the statements wont be executed and the connections will remain open.

To take care of such situations we have a Finally block and as the name suggets this block is executed finally ie after all the above code in try or catch block gets executed.

The finally block is executed:

• Incase the code gets through the try block without any errors
• Incase the code falls through the Catch block because of some exceptions.
• Incase of any flow followed by the code.So the best bet is to put such code in finally block which has to be executed irrespective of the flow of code.
  

  try

  {

  1) Open Database Connection
  2) Retrieve Records
  3) Process data <<—— Exception gets thrown at this point.
  4) Update records back to DataBase
  5) Close Database Connection

  }
  Catch(SQLException Ex)
  {

  Logger.WriteLog(”Exception: Method: ProcessData: Parameters: A = 4, b= “ABC”);
  Throw new Exception(”Error occured in processing data MethodXYZ with parameters a = 4, b =”ABC”, ex);
  }
  Finally
  {
  If (Connection is Open)
  {
  Close Connection
  }
  }

  In the above scenario we have opened a connection in Point # 1 and while processing data i.e Point # 3 the exception gets thrown.In such a case the other statement below ie Point # 4 & #5 will never get executed as the control will be thrown to the catch block and then out of the method. This will lead to open connection.To take care of such situations instead of writing the close connection code in the Try block we should write the same in the Finally block as this block will get executed irrespective of whther there is an exception or not.

Copyright © Shounak Pandit

Got lucky to try my hand at Continous integration once again.. I remember it has been like more than 5 years now that i had used Nant and CCnet for Continous Integration.

It was fun and challenging to use with the then rustic error messages thrown by both.also configuring the same was also a big pain..
Had asked a developer to get it setup for one of the teams projects as i was aware of the advantages of continous integration. but the developer wasn’t able to get it up and running so finally had to get my hands dirty in CI.

Was surprised to see that even now almost after 4-5 years there is no guide/how to on setting it up and using it completely. even now ppl have to go through the site and exmaples which arent in reality what we look for..

Anyways enuf of cribbing …. ill put up a howto/guide on setting it up soon ,it wont be very soon as am quite tied up with different project releases and process implementation stuff.. but hopefully it should be out by mid Oct !!
Copyright © Shounak Pandit

How many times we get fed up of all the cluttered code? Best thing to do is put regions and collapse the regions to free up some space…

• Fold/Unfold the current code block - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+M
• Unfold all - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+L
• Stop outlining - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+P
• Fold all - Ctrl+M, Ctrl+O

Copyright © Shounak Pandit

Came across this comment from Marc Faber has gone back to the basics with his comment !!!

The federal government is sending each of us a $600 rebate.

If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, the money goes to China.
If we spend it on gasoline it goes to the Arabs.
If we buy a computer it will go to India.
If we purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.
If we purchase a good car it will go to Germany.
If we purchase useless **** it will go to Taiwan and none of it will help the American economy.

The only way to keep that money here at home is to spend it on prostitutes and beer, since these are the only products still produced in US.  I’ve been doing my part.

haha the funniest i think :))

to know more about Marc Faber visit his site: http://www.gloomboomdoom.com

Copyright © Shounak Pandit

Had an interesting discussion with a peer while coming back home..and it got me thinking..  he was complaining about the quality of code by his developers and was inquiring what approach I follow in my projects.

To tell you the truth I don’t follow a specific time frame or frequency for performing code review.

Just to give you some food for thought

The frequency of code review should be directly proportional to the number of developers working on the project.

More the number of developers on a project more should be the code review frequency.just to give you a rough idea How many lines of code do we write in an hour? or in an day? we write lots of lines of code… multiplied by the number of developers is the lines of code you will have to review !!!!!!!

He was arguing about the time a PL/TL gets to do code reviews. well yes indeed he was right in his argument, we as PL’s definitely do not get much time but who says we have to do code reviews every time till the release of the project?

The way the developers will write code in a project depends directly on the way they write code in the first couple of weeks of the start of the development phase.If you get them into the habbit of coding it right from the start of the project i guess we wont have to monitor much.

Of course that depends on the quality of the resource

The way i do code reviews is through automated tools & mentoring of good developers to perform code reviews on the team mates.

Naturally PL’s dont get much time to get deeper into the code review process but yes all they have to do is

• Identify the good resource who has a good style + approach at coding and mentor him/her to get into your shoes of performing code reviews.
• Dont completely rely on that resource you do your surprise random code reviews.
• Encourage peer reviews amongst the team. This will in turn ensure small coding issues get addressed at your subordinate level.
• Utilize automated tools for code reviews there are loads of them in the market
• There also are some preventive code review tools which get integrated into the VS IDE as a plugin and correct you with regards to naming convention/ style to a certain extent while you are writing code.Makes sense doesn’t it? to be told what not to do while you are doing it rather than being told after you have already done it and moved on to the next piece of code.
• Generate a check list for coding standards.

Copyright © Shounak Pandit

These are my views, my thoughts need not necassarily be the same as yours…..

Code Review…. The dreaded words for a newbie ears ..or in most of the cases even for the experienced developers!!!!

How to code review ? Over the years of being the code reviewer or me being the reviewee have noticed a few things which i feel are worth mentioning for an effective and pain free code review to happen.

What exactly is a code review i guess everybody knows that , ill try and point out some of the things which should be taken care of for a productive and pain free code review to happen.

• Objective: Make sure the objective behind the code review is well known to the developers involved: Developers need to understand that the code is being reviewed and not the developers ability to code.

• Coding Standard: Make sure you have a predefined set of coding standards circulated with the team before coding. Developers wont have any clue as to what you as a reviewer feel is the right coding standard unless they know what needs to be followed before they start coding.

• Dont Accuse:Code review shouldn’t be used to accuse the coder, but to point out the improvement areas in the code.

• Ask / Discuss: Ask reasons for deviation that have happened than assuming: Its better to let the developers explain the reason for deviation rather than assuming.Lets face it many time there are some theoretically correct statements which cant be possible practically.Hence ask reasons for deviation, understand the developers thought process.

• Listen: Remember the coding approach you use isn’t like the ten commandments.Just because you feel reaching point C is better by going via point A not necessarily everybody will think the same.Let the developer explain why he felt going via point X was better as per him.

• Understand: Remember the code review is about the coding style not about you.: Dont get offended if there are any improvement areas in your coding.Keep one thing in mind the person reviewing your code has also gone through the same phase as you currently.and till the time one understands the improvement areas we wont be able to improve and do coding expected by a seasoned developer.

• Contribute: The coding standards wont contain all the development situations we face under the sun Hence contribution from the developer is absolutely necessary.Just because the person reviewing your code is a TL or PL doesn’t mean he is right all the time.Express your view, understand the reasons why there are improvement areas.Keep one thing in mind we do those things best in which we believe in!!! hence if you do not understand why we are doing certain thing in a certain expected way you will never do it correctly so discuss and understand.

• Appreciate: Code review isn’t just about finding improvement areas. Utilize it also to appreciate someones coding style/Approach.

Lets face it whether we like it or not we have to go in for code reviews some because their leaders make it mandatory while some because they understand the importance of code review.As long as code review happens in the right manner and for the right reasons it is always healthy for the complete team.Have seen or rather experienced developers who would argue over coding standard violation with pointless reasoning.reasoning that would be treated as childish excuses.Listen and explain to them anyways try and make them understand.Ofcourse in many cases you as a TL/PL need to put your foot down or do a little booting to make the developer sunderstand that crappy excuses wont be tolerated.

Also one good thing to do beyond the coding standards document of what to do is to create a coding standard checklist for developers to check against as when they are coding.

Copyright © Shounak Pandit

These are my views, my thoughts need not necassarily be the same as yours…..

Google has done it again… a product built on the problems of the browser users. 

To get a good idea about the features of the browser visit the features video site. The browser isn’t a complex browser Google  has stuck to its simplicity but effectiveness moto once again and delivered.

The Features list includes:

• One box for everything
• New Tab page
• Application shortcuts
• Dynamic tabs
• Crash control
• Incognito mode
• Safe browsing
• Instant bookmarks
• Importing settings
• Simpler downloads

Heil Google!!!!

Another great feature implemented is the way the new tab opens.. it will open a tab with the most visited sites icons in it. All one has to do is click on the one of th emost visited sites. else there is also links on  the right hand side in the new tab to click on the new bookmarks added.

Google chrome just another browser or the mother of all browsers?

Google has done it again..another product/service in the market that has caught all the attention… yeah there are some negative feedbacks especially by the German media on the same too but hey whats success without some criticism??

The argument they have setup is pretty much the old stuff… personal data going to google with respect to the auto suggest feature explained more in detail here

 Google did bend to the criticism and declared they will anonymise the data within 24 hrs of collecting it..but the speculations will always be there..don’t understand the logic behind it… guys its a open source just dig into the source and satisfy your speculative minds ( if you are upto it )…. rather than just barking into the wind…

yeah its a bit risky giving a Beta to inexperience non techie users its like giving a child a Bazooka !! but am sure the Beta isn’t a actual Beta in the scientific terms its definitely a well tested and tried version of the product.we can trust google on this..

© Shounak Pandit

One wonders ….Why in the name of God would one want to spend (waste as some people say) time on performing a code review on any piece of code which we/peers have written and seems to be working properly and providing the functionality

I remember back then when i was an intern and i was assigned to a project in which my PM was a guy working in our US branch…people having worked with US bosses might be knowing thr are 2 types of techies our there… one who have less knowledge than you and the other lot who has so much knowledge than you that they make you feel like you are learning the alphabets of development while they are shooting out complex phrases after phrases of sentences….

man how i hated that guy i can still recall his words “Shounak, Dont even show me the functionality i dont care about it, first make sure you have it as per the coding standards” and i used to think what kind of a weirdo have i got as my boss ..he doesn’t even want to see if the requirement has been met but cares about some stupid code review…..and i used to laugh at his code review obsession…

but over the years as i grew into a techie…into what they call a seasoned developer ..i realised the importance of code review

Code review isnt a tool to find mistakes in others code…its a tool by which one ensures the code is going to meet the standards expected of a seasoned developer.

There are various technical ways of achieving our requirements…or rather let me put it this way there are abundant ways of ******** up the way you meet your requirement.and there are some ways in which you meet the requirement in one of the optimum ways…and code review is a tool that helps us walk on the optimum path or close to the optimum path…

for an example check my post on string builder usage vs string concat… at String Builder Vs String concat/

Code reviews are important for a developer to understand how to keep improving his coding style ..

there are various good tools used for having automated code checking one that i have used extensively in my development days is FxCop and one more that i can’t recall the name of…these were tools which would use the assembly n metadata as source and parse the assembly for any coding style /optimization errors

will try and write up about one of them soon

Cheers

© Shounak Pandit

One wonders ….Why in the name of God would one want to spend (waste as some people say) time on performing a code review on any piece of code which we/peers have written and seems to be working properly and providing the functionality

I remember back then when i was an intern and i was assigned to a project in which my PM was a guy working in our US branch…people having worked with US bosses might be knowing thr are 2 types of techies our there… one who have less knowledge than you and the other lot who has so much knowledge than you that they make you feel like you are learning the alphabets of development while they are shooting out complex phrases after phrases of sentences….

man how i hated that guy i can still recall his words “Shounak, Dont even show me the functionality i dont care about it, first make sure you have it as per the coding standards” and i used to think what kind of a weirdo have i got as my boss ..he doesn’t even want to see if the requirement has been met but cares about some stupid code review…..and i used to laugh at his code review obsession…

but over the years as i grew into a techie…into what they call a seasoned developer ..i realised the importance of code review

Code review isnt a tool to find mistakes in others code…its a tool by which one ensures the code is going to meet the standards expected of a seasoned developer.

There are various technical ways of achieving our requirements…or rather let me put it this way there are abundant ways of ******** up the way you meet your requirement.and there are some ways in which you meet the requirement in one of the optimum ways…and code review is a tool that helps us walk on the optimum path or close to the optimum path…

for an example check my post on string builder usage vs string concat… at String Builder Vs String concat/

Code reviews are important for a developer to understand how to keep improving his coding style ..

there are various good tools used for having automated code checking one that i have used extensively in my development days is FxCop and one more that i can’t recall the name of…these were tools which would use the assembly n metadata as source and parse the assembly for any coding style /optimization errors

will try and write up about one of them soon

Cheers

© Shounak Pandit

Have moved to this blog as my previous blog got deactivated due to lack of blogging !!!! have reposted all my posts from the other blog into here… and hope to blog quite frequently….

Got the following error some time back when i tried running the project,

since it said that it wasnt configured to be dubugged i ran it with the good old “CTRL + F5″ option and got the following error message in IE

my first guess after reading the error (make that reading half the error) was that somehow there was some configuration problem regardign who overrides whom in the web.config and the machine.config.

but after reading the Total error message understood that the error wasnt in the Web.config it was in the IIS virtual Directory settings that I had ,somehow it had changed.

Anyways, here is how to solve the error :-

Just open IIS and goto the properties for the Virtual directory and click on this button

How to have Multiple Instances of Project Server 2003 on 1 Machine

How to have Multi[ple Instances of Project server on 1 Machine

I am using the following as examples throughout this article this will describe the steps needed to follow using EditSite tool by Microsoft:

SQL Server : Shounakp (my machine)

Database Name : ProjServer

Site name : ProjServer

Edit site tool : http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=20891

1. 1. Copy the DATABASE directory – inside the support directory from your SQL 2002/ MS Project server installation CD, to the local drive on your SQL server (Server containing the ProjectServer DB).
   2. Create the new DB ( check fig below ) that will host your new Project Server instance in your SQL server. We need the <SETUPDB.CMD> file.
      NOTE: We cannot name the new instance DB as ProjectServer since the already existing instance of project server creates a DB named ProjectServer for use.

3. On your SQL server, go to command prompt and execute the following command from the Database directory.

4. In this case, <ProjServer> is my SQL Server and using the <SA> account with password < pa$$@word1 >. The command will look like this : E.g

5. Hit ‘Enter”

6. The processing will take up few minutes let it finish properly (check the following screen)

7. The screen will look like the following screen shot, you will have to press any key to continue.

8. We need to grant permissions to the MSProject Roles on our new instance Database. Follow the steps

• • • Open SQL Server Enterprise Manager
    • Click <Security>
    • Click <Logins>
    • Double-click on MSProjectServerUser and grant permission to access the new Dataabse instance <ProjServer>
    • Check <Public> and <MSProjectServerRole> in the <Database Roles> in ProjServer DB (the name of your new DB is) Tab.
    • Double-click on MSProjectUser and grant permission to access the new <ProjServer> Db
    • Check <Public> and <MSProjectRole> in the Dabase Roles in ProjServer (the name of your new DB is) Tab

See the following snap shot :-

9. Install the EditSite tool

10. Browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Resource Kit\Toolbox\EditSite and open the tool .

11. Click on “Add” in the Edit Site tool.A prompt will appear with focus on <Site Information> Tab (see folowing screen shot).

12. Enter the <SiteName> and In <Session Manager> enter the name of your SQL server Machine managing your Session
in my case I used <shounakp>. Select “Default Web Site”, and any of the application pools. I selected MSPS2003AppPool.

13. Click on the Database Information tab and fill in the details.

• • Enter the name of your SQL server, the name of your new manually created DB (in my case I used ProjServer)
  • Enter the SQL user that has the MSProjectServerRole in ITProjects DB (in my case I used MSProjectServerUser with password “password”) and its respective password.
  • Do the above for the MSProjectRole Member (in my case I used MSProjectUser with password “password”.

14. Click on the <Windows Sharepoint Services Information>

We need to use the same Sharepoint Services settings that we are already using for the 1st instance of Project Server
Hence we can get the WSS Settings from the 1st instance of the ProjectServer.

By following the path : Admin - > Manage Windows Sharepoint Services (See snapshot)

15. Click on Create of Edit Site tool You will get the message indicating that the new site was successfully created

16. Open IE and go to your new PWA instance. In my case, I go to http://shounakp/ProjServer

You will be given the following screen :-

17. Enter User name: Administrator and DO NOT enter a password. Hit “Enter”
You will see your newly created Project Server Instance and this message will pop up giving you the opportunity to change the PWA
Administrator’s password.

Change and save the password

18. Enjoy your newly created Project Server instance.

Cheers!!!!!

UPDATE: Reposting from my previous blog..

Copyright © Shounak Pandit

Reposting from old blog

One of my colleague faced a strange problem while using Crystal Reports

He got his report published on the ASPX page but the images in the toolbar weren’t being displayed.
While trying to find out the problem for it I checked the ASPX page and noticed that the src path for the images on the toolbar was from another virtual directory  “crystalreportwebformviewer2” which to our surprise didnt exists on his machine at all.
Well no idea whether that was due to inapropriate installation or what but the fact was we didnt have a directory to which
t he images were being referenced from.

Well anyways here’s the solution to the above problem
When you plan to use the Crystal reports toolbar in your reports it will automatically
refer to the images stored in your program files directory i.e

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Crystal Reports\Viewers\Images

this directory has all the images in appropriate sub directories inside but for .NET to refer to it at runtime there
needs to be a virtual directory

in Our case the virtual directory being referenced was This might change according to the version of Crystal reports being used.

So all we had to do to get the Images on the toolbar was to

1# Create a virtual directory   crystalreportwebformviewer2
2# Map it to  C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Crystal Reports\Viewers\Images

After which the images on the toolbar were displayed without any other issue

Shounak Pandit

reposting from older blog

How String Concatenation String Builder Append affects performance

Most of us have used String concatenation in our projects, Have we ever given a thought to what goes on behind while concatenating the strings?

There is a major flaw in using string concatenation as against the String builders append concerning performance only.
Except for performance and memory management both are same and give us the same desired output.

How they work

Lets take a look at how the things work when we concatenate strings

lets take a case where we are concatenating 2 strings and assigning the output to a 1^st string

outputString += secondString;

In the above case, each instance of the string is created and assigned hence

in total we will have 3 instances of the strings!! Surprised?? well thats how strings concatenation works

It will create a new string outputString,with both old outputString and secondString

String objects in .net are immutable. Once the string has been created, the value can’t be changed. When you type
outputString = outputString + secondString;
you actually discard the old outputString and create a new string object containing the result of the concatenation. When repeated several times, you end up constructing many temporary string objects.

now just imagine the case where you have n number of strings you have to concatenate how many string objects will be created wont that be a waste of time ??? Creating a string object assigning it some value then again creating a string object and so on …..

Imagine the impact on the performance of the application!!!!

Now lets see how String builder works

Using a string builder you will have

System.Text.StringBuilder outputString = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

outputString.Append(secondString);

StringBuilder, is a mutable string hence in this case we just have 1 instance of outputString and the second string is appended into that existing instance
no other instance is created hence the process is efficient and fast.

Note :- The point to remember here is that using StringBuilder for a concatenation of 2-3 strings doesnt make a significant difference in the performance but when you have numerous strings then the usage of StringBuilder has a big positive Impact on the performance

To see a example check my post

Shounak Pandit

Here is  in which you can send appointments via ICalendar format through code and not using the Outlook Object library (This is a very basic version of the way and does not involve much exception handling,and doesnt take care of nth case , explore a bit on that front :))

I am going to show the method of sending an appointment by creating a ICalendar Appointment file first and then sending it as an attachement over email.  (The way in which ICalendar format files are sent when you click on Tools ->Export -> as ICalendar file in the appointment )

Here is the declaration for the TimeFormat and some variables used to fill  the Appoinment details. viz start time,endtime etc.

Create a Skeleton for the appointment ICalendar file format and using the variables created above we will assign the values accordingly into the Appoinment skeleton. (This string concatation can be optimised by using string builder)

Assign the Appointment values to the variables declared in the first code section and in the appropriate format.

Using String.format fill in the Appoinment skeleton created earlier with the variable values.

Now that we have the ICalendar file created, we need to write it to the disk so as to attach it to the outgoing email
(Anybody knows a method of just creating the ICalendar file in memory and directly attaching the file without creating a Physical file please leave a feedback on how to do that,didnt get much time to look into it.)

Now that we have the ICalendar all we need to do is send a mail to the persons involved in the Appoinment with the ICalendar file as an attachment.

When the Person who receives the mail opens the attached ICalendar file,it will open up in Outlook as an Outlook Appoinment.

Cheers!!

P.S There are a lot of improvements that can be done in this code like for e.g using stringbuilder etc but I have skipped on them as this is just a code snippet.

To see the code for the above SendAppoinment method click here

*Update : For those of you interested in sending a Meeting Request here is the VCalendar format

* Known Issue: If a person rejects the meeting it wont be conveyed to you

Datagrid Sorting ASP.NET or How to Sort Datagrid

Step I )

In the Datagrid definition:
add 2 properties AllowSorting = true and OnSortCommand=”MethodName in code behind”

e.g
<asp:datagrid id=”dgSearchList” runat=”server” Height=”125px” Width=”627px” CssClass=”panelChildSolidBorder”
CellPadding=”2″ AllowCustomPaging=”True” AutoGenerateColumns=”False” OnItemCommand=”detailsClicked”
ShowHeader=”True” AllowSorting=”True” OnSortCommand=”dgSearchList_SortClick” PageSize=”4″>

AllowSorting=”True” makes the datagrid sortable and OnSortCommand=”dgSearchList_SortClick” tells which method to call when the header is clicked.

Step II )

Now we need to define the method to call when the column headers are clicked
here dgSearchList_SortClick is the method that will be called when the Column headers are clicked for sorting.

Codebehind :

public void dgSearchList_SortClick(object sender,DataGridSortCommandEventArgs e)
{
sortField = e.SortExpression; // ie the Sortexpression assigned to the Column.Check STEP III for how to assign a   // sortexpression on a column.
PopulateDatagrid(); //Call the method that populates the Datagrid with
//the values from the Dataview.
}

PopulateDatagrid()
{
if(sortMode.ToString().Trim().Equals(SORT_ASC))
{
sortMode = SORT_DESC; // Here sortMode is just a Variable storing the
direction of the sort.There are better ways to store this than the current one shown hereJ
}
else
{
sortMode = SORT_ASC;
}
txtSortMode.Text = sortMode;

// SORT_DESC and SORT_ASC are constants with the following string values.
// SORT_DESC = “Desc”
// SORT_ASC = “Asc”

DataView dv = new DataView(dt);
dv.Sort = sortField.Trim() + ” ” + sortMode;
dgSearchList.DataSource = dv;
dgSearchList.DataBind();

}

The code above checks whether we want to sort in Ascending order or in Descending order
and assigns the SortExpression concatenated with the Sorting direction (Asc/Desc)
and binds the datagrid again (don’t forget to bind the data grid its very important)

Step III)
You need to specify the sorting expression for that column in the column definition in the ASPX page

e.g
<asp:BoundColumn DataField=”Location” SortExpression=”Location” HeaderText=”LocationArea”>
<ItemStyle Height=”10px” Width=”10px”><!–ItemStyle>
asp:BoundColumn>

be carefull of what you define as the sortexpression because this is what is passed to the codebehind and sortexpression is what identifies which column was clicked for sorting

in this case the sort expression for the LocationArea column is “Location”, hence when we clicking on the location column will set the e.SortExpression (check Step III for e.SortExpression) to “Location”. Hence identifying the column clicked.

Worked on my first Web Service today, wasn’t much of a complex web service but I got some idea about WebServices and their working.
Was a simulation of a XML returned by a third party tool retrieving records from DB2,
The objective involved getting rid of the extra nodes (data) returned in the XML from the 3rd party and just passing on the XML data recognised by the consumer application as a valid object.This was achieved by making my transformer app sit in between the Webservice and the consumer app.

The best option in this case was transforming the XML output from the 3rd party tool into XML recognised by the consumer application using XSLT as it allowed us to change the nodes (data) passed on to the consumer app by just changing the XLS file and not recompiling the whole of the transformer app (incase we had written a custom class to take care of parsing the output XML and returning only selected number of fields).
Will post a code snippet on the transformation code a bit later.Now I am almost done with the Cruisenet Doc ,will be posting that in a while here (by tomorrow most probably) and ofcourse the Nant and Nunit doc need to be completed and posted too

ShotCut Keys

Convert selected code to lower case - Ctrl+U
Convert selected code to upper case - Ctrl+Shift+U
Comment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C
Uncomment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U

WordWrap

Have a line of code which goes beyond the screen width? but you need to keep it that way and the only alternative is to scroll all the way to the right?
Well theres good news VS IDE provides a (toggle) shortcut which will put the line contents beyond the screen width on the next line and back onto the same line.

ShortCut Key : - Ctrl + r + r (toggles)

ShotCut Keys

Convert selected code to lower case - Ctrl+U
Convert selected code  to upper case - Ctrl+Shift+U
Comment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C
Uncomment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U

WordWrap

Have a line of code which goes beyond the screen width? but you need to keep it that way and the only alternative is to scroll all the way to the right?
Well theres good news VS IDE provides a (toggle) shortcut which will put the line contents beyond the screen width on the next line and back onto the same line.

ShortCut Key : -   Ctrl + r + r   (toggles)

Bookmarks

Bookmarks are available through Edit - > Bookmarks.
using bookmarks we can mark places in our code which we would like to revisit later on.
Create/Remove Bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+K
Move to next bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+N
Move to previous bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+P
Clear all bookmarks - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+L

Incremental Search Pressing

Ctrl+i will incrementally search for text as you type.

HOWTO : Press Ctrl + i then type the word you want to search. Hit backspace to clear a character and enter to finish.
Pressing F3 after this will work as usual, i.e. search for the next occurrence of previous search.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks are available through Edit - > Bookmarks.
using bookmarks we can mark places in our code which we would like to revisit later on.
Create/Remove Bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+K
Move to next bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+N
Move to previous bookmark - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+P
Clear all bookmarks - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+L

Incremental Search Pressing

Ctrl+i  will incrementally search for text as you type.

HOWTO : Press Ctrl +  i   then type the word you want to search. Hit backspace to clear a character and enter to finish.
Pressing F3 after this will work as usual, i.e. search for the next occurrence of previous search.

What is with the combination of Response.redirect and Try catch block?

well, most of you who have tried out the combination must have been stuck with a weird error of “Thread was being aborted” and must have wondered what has a thread got to do with Response.redirect?

Well, to answer your question here goes:-

A thread is executing your application in terms of ASP.NET worker process , when you call Response.Redirect(URL);

In your code then to redirect to the new URL specified by you ASP.NET framework must be told to stop the current execution of the page and to transfer the execution to the URL page specified in the method call.

This is done in a 2 way step :-

1) Response.End() is called internally by Response.Redirect to stop the current execution and the ThreadAbortException is thrown.

2) .NET framework will call catch “ThreadAbortException” and stop current execution and start executing the new page.

Now during the Step #1 Response.End will throw out a “ThreadAbortException” to let .NET framework know that the current execution needs to be stopped and the execution of new should begin.

Asp.net framework catches the Redirect method’s exception, aborts the thread and use a new thread for execution of to be redirected page.

Solution :- The way to get over this problem is to specify Response.Redirect(URL,false) , this will tell .NET framework not to stop the execution of the current thread and hence the error will be resolved.

“ThreadAbortException” is a special kind of an exception even if you catch it in a catch block even then it will be raised again at the end of the catch block. When this exception is raised, the runtime executes all the finally blocks before killing the thread.

“Visual Studio .NET has detected that the specified Web server is not running ASP.NET version 1.1. You will be unable to run ASP.NET Web applications or services“

Got this error when i tried to create a new web project on my computer in my new company
Here is the solution i followed :-

• Open Visual Studio Command prompt.
• Type “aspnet_regiis -i“ and press enter.

Here is the output :-

c:\>aspnet_regiis -i
Start installing ASP.NET (1.1.4322.0).
Finished installing ASP.NET (1.1.4322.0).

Thats it now try creating a new web project it will work.

UPDATE :

Steps to reach the VS Command Prompt

1) Click Start.
2) Programs/All Programs.
3) Microsoft Visual Studio .Net 2003.
4) Visual Studio .Net Tools
5) Visula Studio .Net 2003 command Prompt.

Server versions of OS

For the Server versions of OS the above step might not work Try the following

To resolve this problem, change the status of ASP.NET 1.1 to Allowed in the Web Service Extension list in IIS 6.0. To do this, follow these steps:

NOTE:- There is an issue in running ASP.NET over sharepoint portal server some settings need to be made for the 2 to run.

Crystal reports provides its own printing method, which will print the page but there might be some problems in the print out unless you set the margins for the page.

PrinttoPrinter method of Crystal reports

Learnt a new thing today:-

Ever tried using Form Validators on a form which would be opened in a Non MS IE browser?
You will be surprised to see that the client side validation doesn’t work even though you have set cleintvalidation to True.
Only the server side validation work for Non MS IE Browsers.

The reason for this is because of the way the validators are built up.

To start with,by default ASP.NET is configured to send HTML 4.0-compliant HTML to only Internet Explorer, and sends HTML 3.2-compliant HTML to all non-Microsoft browsers, even though modern, non-Microsoft browsers such as Netscape 6.0+, Mozilla, Opera etc. can handle HTML 4.0.
This can be taken care of by changing the configuration in the Browser Caps section of the config file.

But one thing that still creates a problem for client side validation is the way the client side script is renedered on to the page.
Using the Browser Caps settings the HTML 4.0  compliant HTML will be rendered onto the page but inspite of this the script emitted by the BaseValidator class contains a javascript block that creates an array of all the validators on that particular page.
This array is used to itterate through to check the validity of the controls on the page
its done using the

script which is only supported by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer While other browsers (including MS IE) supports the standard way

There are some workarounds like some people who have build validator controls by extending from the Basevalidator class and overiding the method that emits the Javascript code to emit the correct standard script.
Good news is that this problem is taken care of in Whidbey (.NET 2.0)
Bad news is till its released we have to work with the workarounds

I had to create a Appointment by parsing through the database and then sending a particular guy a appointment which would remind him about the appointment approx 15 mins before the scheduled time. The same way in which Outlook Appointment functions.

Searching a bit, I found a way to utilise the Outlook Object library and send appointments by creating appointment objects and sending them.

Was damn happy with the outcome till I ran the program and then I saw the dreaded Prompt.
Due to a security protocol of MS ( Security patch ),everytime a code tried to create a instance of the Outlook object library and use it to send a mail, appoinment etc. it prompts the user with a dialog box asking him whether to allow access or to reject access to the program trying to use outlook object.

Now, since I was writing the code as a part of Windows Service there was no question of the prompt and letting the user click on the buttons every time code would send a appointment. Hence searching a bit on the outlooks Way of Forwarding Appoinments in ICalendar format and also the great Google Found out a way of creating a ICalendar format Appointment and sending it accorss to the attendee.

Here is a way in which you can send appointments via ICalendar format through code and not using the Outlook Object library (This is a very basic version of the way and does not involve much exception handling,and doesnt take care of nth case , explore a bit on that front :))

• The Appointment method
• The Appointment article (Explains a bit of the method code)

posted Thursday, February 24, 2005 12:40 AM by Shaunakp with 2 Comments

SendAppointment Method ASP.NET ,ICalendar format

For all of you looking for proof that Stringbuilder is faster than the normal string concatenation using “+”

In the following code snippet i have used both the methods and used start time and end time in each method to calculate the Elasped time for each respective method Create a new project and add the necessary labels and the button to check it for yourself.

private void Calculatebutton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{

DateTime plusStart;

DateTime plusEnd;

DateTime bldrStart;

DateTime bldrEnd;

string test = String.Empty;

string stringToAppend = “ap”;

System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();

int upperlimit = 100000;

plusStart = DateTime.Now;

for (int i=0 ; i < upperlimit ; i ++ )

{

test += stringToAppend;

}

plusEnd = DateTime.Now;

plusElaspedlabel.Text = plusEnd.Subtract(plusStart).ToString();

plusEndlabel.Text = plusEnd.ToString();

plusStartlabel.Text = plusStart.ToString();

bldrStart = DateTime.Now;

for (int j=0; j < upperlimit ; j ++ )

{

sb.Append(stringToAppend);

}

bldrEnd = DateTime.Now;

bldrElaspedlabel.Text = bldrEnd.Subtract(bldrStart).ToString();

bldrEndlabel.Text = bldrEnd.ToString();

bldrStartlabel.Text = bldrStart.ToString();

}

Reposting from prev blog

Idle mind is Devils Workshop!!

Today didnt have much tasks to work on as had already finished the task expected to go on till today evening ,hence had loads of free time to try out stuff
Found this link Lockworkstation Function and thouht of implementing it in .NET since I hated the idea of

CTRL + ALT + DEL and ENTER / Win + L to lock my workstation.

Anyways here it is the code

You will need to include the Namespace
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

Copy the following in the Code behind

[DllImport("user32.dll")]

public static extern void LockWorkStation();

And in the form load event give a call to the LockWorkStation Method we declared above.

private void LockStation_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
try
{
LockWorkStation();
}
finally
{
this.Close();
}
}

Thats it you are done !! Copy the Assembly from the bin folder onto your desktop and click on it whenever you want to Lock your workstation!!

Cheers!!

Welcome to Blog.co.in. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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Many times you will come across a scenario where you will have to pass some values to the next form that you are calling. There are many such approaches of passign values in ASP.NET
I will be discussing some of them over here.

# 1 Using Querystring

e.g
Calling form :

private void LoadForm2_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
string value1 = “5002″;
string value2 = “Shaunak Pandit”;
string webForm2url = String.Empty;

webForm2url = “webForm2.aspx?empId=” + value1 + “&empName=” + value2;
Response.Redirect(webForm2url);
}

Destination form :

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Label1.Text=Request.QueryString["empName"];
Label2.Text=Request.QueryString["empId"];
}

Pros :

1. The most easiest and the simplest of the methods.

1. Doesnt have overload on the server

Cons

1. Values turn up in the URL in address bar, hence user can see the values being passed

1. User can manipulate the values in the URL

1. URL becomes messy (not that we care though)

# 2 Using Session variables

Calling form :

private void Button2_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
string value1 = “5002″;
string value2 = “Shaunak Pandit”;

Session["empId"] = value1;
Session["empName"] = “Shounak Pandit”;
Response.Redirect(”webform2.aspx”);
}

Destination form :

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
try
{
Label1.Text = Session["empName"].ToString();
Label2.Text = Session["empId"].ToString();
string df = Session["empgfdfdfId"].ToString(); <—- A
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
//…..///
}
}

Pros :

1. Data saved in session and will remain there till the session is closed or till its explicitly, hence no need to pass it from one page to another once loaded in session.

1. Since it will be available across all pages saves us the trouble for passing ti on every page.

Cons

1. Data stored at server side

1. Explicitly need to remove the data from session once your work is done with the data.

1. Overload on server. e.g consider a case where there are more than thousands of users accesing your site simultaneously (remeber this is just an example) and you store some data in session.Then there will be million sessions saved in your server and each of these session will have the data i.e in turn million data.

1. Overall a bad idea when you have multiple simulatneous users.

# 3 Using Server.Trasnfer and Context object

Calling form :
Add a property in the calling form

public string ID
{
get
{
return empIdTextbox.Text; // This need not be a control value it can also contain a member variable.
}
}

private void Context_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Server.Transfer(”webform2.aspx”);
}

Destination form :

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
try
{
//create instance of source web form.

WebForm1 formCallee;
//get reference to current handler instance.

formCallee =(WebForm1)Context.Handler;

//Call the property to retrieve the value.
Label1.Text=formCallee.ID;
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
string errMessage = ex.Message;
}
}

#4 Using Server.Trasnfer and preserve form attribute

Server.Transfer(”webform2.aspx”, true); <– Note the second parameter to Server.Transfer is set to true this indicates that the form members are not to be discarded.

NOTE : There is a bug related to ASP.NET You can read stuff abt the bug at Server.Trasfer Bug post

Calling form :

Destination form :

private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
try
{
Label1.Text = Label1.Text = Request.Form["empIdTextbox"] ;
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
string errMessage = ex.Message;
}
}

Invalid viewstate viewstate corrupted ?
Ever got this error and thought what you did to deserve this ? since nowhere have you played with the viewstate of the page…

while all you did was use the statement : Server.Trasnfer(PageURL, true);

well here is the answer

Thats b’coz the viewstate is invalid in the second page and how so ? well lets start with what does Server.Trasfer() with preserveForm attribute set to true does.

The statement is going to transfer to the new page and keep the form members intact so that you can access it from the next page.

Which in turns means every control on the form will be accessible from the second form and since viewstate of a page is stored in a encrypted format in a hidden textbox on the form it will also

be accessible and present in the second form.

Now here lies the problem.

The second form will contain its own viewstate and now since we have used preserve form = true the viewstate of the previous form will also be present in the second form which is a
complete nono since how can one page have 2 viewstates.This is the reason why we get the above error.

Note : If you are running your application on a web farm then the error might also be because the validation key used for validating the viewstate is different for each
server in the web farm.

posting something to prove my existence in this blogosphere
The project i am working on is a great learning thing for me working on reflection
Well to give a brief idea i have to create a utility which will compare 2 versions of a set of dlls and find the version compatibility issues arising out of it and make a report from the compatibility issues.
This is done by going through the members of a dll and populating a object model.
and later on comparing both the object models version 2.X and version 3.X to find the compatibility issues.

To do that have to use

• Reflection for reading .Net assemblies

• Tlbinf32.dll for reading COM files

Reflection was cool with loads of example to refer to on net and also the great MSDN
but the typle lib information dll tlibinf32.dll took away my sleep since

• Its no longer supported by MS

• The help file that i found referred to some code samples which were written for the previous release of tlbinf32.dll

just my luck…

so it was all RnD for the tlbinf32.dll for me. but finally got it done
will publish a post soon with some basic examples of tlbinf32.dll over here so that others dont have to go through the ordeal i went through.

ciao for now

Shaunak P

Posting after a long long time have been really busy with somethings anyways here is a good article on ASP.NET 2.0 Internals

Good article on ASP.NET 2.0 Internals

Explains the details of ASP.NET 2.0
Happy Reading !!!!

Convert selected code to lower case - Ctrl+U
Convert selected code to upper case - Ctrl+Shift+U
Comment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C
Uncomment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U

WordWrap

Have a line of code which goes beyond the screen width? but you need to keep it that way and the only alternative is to scroll all the way to the right?
Well theres good news VS IDE provides a toggle shortcut which will put the line contents beyond the screen width on the next line and back onto the same line

ShortCut Key : - Ctrl + r + r (toggles)

Convert selected code to lower case - Ctrl+U
Convert selected code to upper case - Ctrl+Shift+U
Comment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C
Uncomment selected code - Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U

WordWrap

Have a line of code which goes beyond the screen width? but you need to keep it that way and the only alternative is to scroll all the way to the right?
Well theres good news VS IDE provides a toggle shortcut which will put the line contents beyond the screen width on the next line and back onto the same line

ShortCut Key : - Ctrl + r + r (toggles)

Letting .Net remind you of the TODO task in your code

.Net IDE provides a mechanism of keeping track of all the TODO tasks in your code.This is done through the Task window
Using the “TODO“ Keyword we can tell .NET IDE to remind us about this TODO task in the task window

HOWTO : - simply add a comment to your code that starts with the TODO keyword. It will automatically be added to your existing Task list.

E.g : - // TODO: Need to optimise the AuthoriseUser Method.

To view the Task list (ShortCut Key : Ctrl+Alt+K ):-

select View > Other Windows > Task List from the menu .
The Task list often filters its contents, so it displays only certain information. To view everything, right-click on your list and select All Tasks > All.

Letting .Net remind you of the TODO task in your code

.Net IDE provides a mechanism of keeping track of all the TODO tasks in your code.This is done through the Task window
Using the “TODO“ Keyword we can tell .NET IDE to remind us about this TODO task in the task window

HOWTO : - simply add a comment to your code that starts with the TODO keyword. It will automatically be added to your existing Task list.

E.g : - // TODO: Need to optimise the AuthoriseUser Method.

To view the Task list (ShortCut Key : Ctrl+Alt+K ):-

select View > Other Windows > Task List from the menu .
The Task list often filters its contents, so it displays only certain information. To view everything, right-click on your list and select All Tasks > All.

Storing Often-Used Code in the Toolbox

If there is some often-used code and templates that you repeatedly have to use across various code behinds what would you usually do ?
Copy that code snippet somewhere , say … in notepad or something and everytime you need it you will simply copy it back into the code behind. Well thats the most obvious thing to do, but did you know that VS IDE allows us to store code snippets into the toolbar for later use??

HowTO : - Simply drag and drop your code straight onto one of the toolbox tabs, such as the General tab or create your own tab . When you need to use it again, simply drag and drop back into your code window.These code snippets will persist there across projects.Hence making our job easier.

Storing Often-Used Code in the Toolbox

If there is some often-used code and templates that you repeatedly have to use across various code behinds what would you usually do ?
Copy that code snippet somewhere , say … in notepad or something and everytime you need it you will simply copy it back into the code behind. Well thats the most obvious thing to do, but did you know that VS IDE allows us to store code snippets into the toolbar for later use??

HowTO : - Simply drag and drop your code straight onto one of the toolbox tabs, such as the General tab or create your own tab . When you need to use it again, simply drag and drop back into your code window.These code snippets will persist there across projects.Hence making our job easier.

Tsunami,

Always thought that India was safe from the affects of Tsunami was a shock to hear abt the Wave hitting the southern India and having such a major impact.

Hope many people donate money to tsunami relief funds however small it may be the point to remember here is that even a amount negligible to us might make a big difference to some of the affected people there.

In case you want to have a look at how it was here is a link to some of the Tsunami videos Tsunami videos

a] Money in the form of cheque / demand draft contributions is an URGENT need. The payment could be made favouring : ‘Indian Red Cross Society’ and dropped at Red Cross office, Atur Sangtani Red Cross House, M.G.Road, Pune 411 001 OR with Ms.Vijaya Moorthy at 3 Silver Classic Apartments, S.R.P.F.Road, Wanowrie, Pune 411 040. You can contact Pune phone nos. 2613 0031 / cell no.98220 04752 for contributions. Red Cross donations are exempted under Sec.80-G of the Income Tax Act. Please mention your name /address/phone no. on a slip of paper attached to your DD/cheque.

b] MAITRI, an NGO, working in the affected areas of Tamil Nadu is sending out food items like rice, dal, mineral water bottles and dry milk powder eg.Amulya (1 kg.packs) on 7th January. Contributions of this nature can be made. Please contact Ms. Vinita Tatke at mobile no.94225 21702 OR vinitat@vsnl.com.

c] Doctors / psychologists ( only ) who can speak MALAYALAM are required for the Red Cross team to be sent out to affected areas of Kerala for relief work. Contact Prof.R V Kulkarni at phone no. 2613 0331 / Red Cross office 2613 0031 / Vijaya Moorthy at vmoorthy@rediffmail.com.

The above phone nos. pertaining to Pune. Those calling up from other parts of the country need to prefix 020 for landlines and 0 for mobile nos.

Here are some links to various Relief funds

Times relief Fund : - IndiaTimes Registration

TimesFoundation info

Tsunami Information Updates + some international organisation where you can Donate

Indian Red Cross </a

>

Info on Prime Ministers Fund The best fund to donate money is the Prime Ministers fund

Some info on where to donate on rediff

Shaunak Pandit

Worked on my first Web Service today, wasn’t much of a complex web service but I got some idea about WebServices and their working.
Was a simulation of a XML returned by a third party tool retrieving records from DB2,
The objective involved getting rid of the extra nodes (data) returned in the XML from the 3rd party and just passing on the XML data recognised by the consumer application as a valid object.This was achieved by making my transformer app sit in between the Webservice and the consumer app.

The best option in this case was transforming the XML output from the 3rd party tool into XML recognised by the consumer application using XSLT as it allowed us to change the nodes (data) passed on to the consumer app by just changing the XLS file and not recompiling the whole of the transformer app (incase we had written a custom class to take care of parsing the output XML and returning only selected number of fields).

Will post a code snippet on the transformation code a bit later.Now I am almost done with the Cruisenet Doc ,will be posting that in a while here (by tomorrow most probably) and ofcourse the Nant and Nunit doc need to be completed and posted too

Getting that Meeting request object assembly that I wrote to work was the easy part , making it configurable with a web application was the headache.

To keep the consumer trasnperant from the internals of how I am creating the meeting request through code and sending it to the attendee needed a heck of time especially since I needed the current working directory for temporary storage of the ICalendar file.
Hence tried out the Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() method to get the CWD from the system but instead got c:\windows\system32. that’s right you read it right “c:\windows\system32″
Was baffled by the result and googled a bit searching here and there for the answer to the mysterious result.
and was thinking abt the connection between the returned directory and my application when it struck me
my project was an Web Application and hence it was being executed by the ASPnet_WP.exe which inturn was being created by Inetinfo.Exe (IIS) which resides in the path and hence the return path.

Moral of the story :- Analyse the situation before looking for solution

Had to revert back to exec task of nant and use the Devenv.exe to build the solution as I had some weird assembly referencing problems.

While building the solution it was looking for the references one level above the directory containing the assemblies

couldn’t figure out what the problem was since I was short on time,had no option but to use the exec task and directly build the project solution, it solved my problem but I still need to figure out a solution to my earlier problem of wrong references

using Devenv solved the problem but not sure if that’s one of the accepted approach and whether I should use an *external exe to build the solution than find a solution to the problem arisen out of using the solution task provide by nant

Am writing an article on howto implement Cruisenet and Nant in continous integration which will include the steps to follow to setup cruisenet and nant on your build server and how to implement the integration.

Hope this article will solve the problems faced by first timers and save a lot of their time from doing R n D

* By external I mean a .exe out of nant tasks , nant might be internally using Devenv.exe to compile the projects who knows.

Starting solution build. BUILD FAILED Error checking whether ‘http://localhost/ProjectDirectory/projectname.csproj’

is an enterprise template project. The remote server returned an error:

(403) Forbidden. Total time: 0.3 seconds.

that’s the error that I got when the nant build script tried to build the Web Project I tried out diff stuff but didn’t succeed for quite some time maybe was missing something important,dint know what to do then something struck me, when we define a virtual directory we have diff options.

And one of the important ones there is “script source access” especially in our case as we are trying to access the files in the virtual directory and build them using nant scripts

The reason for this happening is that IIS has a strict access setting for the virtual directories that it hosts and it doesn’t allow any scripts to access the files in the virtual directory’s physical folder and hence the message The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden

one of the way to solve this problem is by checking the option of script source access in the virtual directories properties

Here is the place where you can check the option to allow script access to your code files for getting rid of the Nant forbidden error

Building the invidiual sub projects first and then referencing the compiled assemly (in build folder ) in the main project turned out to be a bad idea. After completing the build thought of testing (fortunately!! ) it for build success and a build failure.

For the failure I removed a much needed reference (one of the sub projects) from the main project and then checked in the project file and was expecting a build fail email from ccnet (CruiseNet) but was baffled to see a success mail instead.

A little bit of thinking on it got me to the much obvious reasons (was stupid of me not to have foreseen that) the process I was following was of building the sub-projects and pushing the compiled sub project assembly in the build folder and then the project would reference the sub project assembly from the build folder.

The problem was even though I had removed the reference from the main project file, my compiling of the sub project would automatically push the assembly in the build folder

and since we have to hard code the references it would find it and give a successful build even though it was a failure.

moral :- Use a solution task and build the solution instead of individual projects to automatically detect the references in the project.

Just came across a stale news on net posted in oct sometime anyways here it is :-

Microsoft has posted guidance that protects against a reported vulnerability in all versions of ASP.NET that could allow a Web site visitor to view secured content by using specially crafted requests to a Web server. For more information http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/aspnet.mspx

If I asked you to

change the title of your Web form

dynamically

, where would you look ??

you’d be forgiven for looking for a “title” or “text” property somewhere. The problem is, that mysterious property doesn’t exist no prizes for guessing y!!.

Here’s howto.

Step 1 >> switch to the HTML view on your Web form. Near the top of your page, you’ll see the title tag, looking something like :

” WebForm1 ” .

Replace this with ”’.

The quotes are just added to get rid of the parser error i had

becoz of having a original Title tag in the post and plus one more in my code

sample , the code is without the quotes

Here, you’re creating a title tag that runs on the server and has an ID, meaning you can manipulate it in code.

ie add a runat server attribute and an ID to the tag

Step 2 >> switch back to design mode; then, open up the code window behind your form. This declares the server title tag you’ve just added:

protected System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl pageTitle;

so that its accessible in ur code behind.

Step 3 >> changing the page text. Behind the Load event of your page, or in response to some similar event, set the InnerText property of the PageTitle tag to your new page title. Here’s my sample code:

PageTitle.InnerText = “Welcome! - Last Updated 20/05/2003″;

And that’s it Presto —one line of code and your page title has changed.

P.S One thing to note is that :- the moment you make any changes in the UI of the ASPX Page Visual studio gets rid of the

What a better way to start my post than to post the Microsoft Exam thots here
Well, to tell the truth the thot of giving a MCAD exam gave jitters to me till the last moment ,even at the Prometric center while i was abt to click on the start button of the exam.

Had wondered earlier if the grey matter up there was in shape to handle the heavy project work loads, the studies inbetween project breaks but looks like there is something still up there as i passed out with flying colors was a bit of surprise to me too as was expecting arnd 800’s ,but i guess the MSPress,kalani & Wrox books had prepared me for the exam & plus the missing out on parties with frnds and ditching outings with frnds to study paid out in the end

Ofcourse dont want to let go of the Tempo and plan to give the

70-320 and 70-229 exam soon

Marking this in a block quote so that it will always be a bold

statement for me whenever i read this post

lets c!!!!