Carso Leong's Blog

get database columns using mssql server

2011-08-24T10:15:00.001+08:00

SELECT   schemas.name AS [Schema],

         tables.name AS [Table],

         columns.name AS [Column],

         CASE 

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 34    THEN 'byte[]'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 35    THEN 'string'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 36    THEN 'System.Guid'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 48    THEN 'byte'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 52    THEN 'short'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 56    THEN 'int'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 58    THEN 'System.DateTime'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 59    THEN 'float'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 60    THEN 'decimal'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 61    THEN 'System.DateTime'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 62    THEN 'double'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 98    THEN 'object'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 99    THEN 'string'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 104   THEN 'bool'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 106   THEN 'decimal'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 108   THEN 'decimal'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 122   THEN 'decimal'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 127   THEN 'long'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 165   THEN 'byte[]'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 167   THEN 'string'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 173   THEN 'byte[]'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 175   THEN 'string'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 189   THEN 'long'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 231   THEN 'string'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 239   THEN 'string'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 241   THEN 'string'

             WHEN columns.system_type_id = 241   THEN 'string'

         END AS [Type],

         columns.is_nullable AS [Nullable]





FROM              sys.tables tables

    INNER JOIN    sys.schemas schemas ON (tables.schema_id = schemas.schema_id )

    INNER JOIN    sys.columns columns ON (columns.object_id = tables.object_id) 

 



WHERE     tables.name <> 'sysdiagrams' 

    AND   tables.name <> 'dtproperties' 



ORDER BY [Schema], [Table], [Column], [Type]

how to generate json file from .net object

2011-02-23T16:24:00.002+08:00

    public class data_city
    {
        private string _city;

        public string city
        {
            get { return _city; }
        }

        public data_city(string city)
        {
            _city = city;
        }

    }

    public class data_state
    {
        public data_state(string id, string name)
        {
            _id = id;
            _name = name;
        }

        private string _id;

        public string id
        {
            get { return _id; }
        }
        private string _name;

        public string name
        {
            get { return _name; }
        }

        private List<data_city> _Cities = new List<data_city>();

        public List<data_city> cities
        {
            get { return _Cities; }
            set { _Cities = value; }
        }

    }

    private void GenerateJsonCities()
    {

        var state = from s in developerDataContext.States
                                orderby s.DisplayOrder
                                select new { id = s.StateCode, name = s.Description };

        List<data_state> dsl = new List<data_state>();
        foreach (var s in state)
        {
            data_state ds = new data_state(s.id, s.name);

            List<City> ss = developerDataContext.Cities.Where(p => p.StateCode == s.id).OrderBy(p => p.City1).ToList();

            foreach (City c in ss)
            {
                ds.cities.Add(new data_city(c.City1));
            }

            dsl.Add(ds);

        }

JavaScriptSerializer serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();

string json = serializer.Serialize(dsl);

        string city_json = string.Format("var data_state = {0};", json);

        File.WriteAllText(MapPath("~/scripts/referenceData/state_city.js"), city_json);



    }

how to get optimum sizes of resized image with proportion in .NET

2010-04-06T09:49:00.003+08:00

Private _MaxWidth As Integer
Private _MaxHeight As Integer

Public Property MaxWidth() As Integer
Get
Return _MaxWidth
End Get
Set(ByVal value As Integer)
_MaxWidth = value
End Set
End Property

Public Property MaxHeight() As Integer
Get
Return _MaxHeight
End Get
Set(ByVal value As Integer)
_MaxHeight = value
End Set
End Property

Private Function CalculateOptimumImageSize(ByVal src As System.Drawing.Image) As Integer()
Dim sizeImgDim As Integer() = New Integer(1) {}

sizeImgDim(0) = src.Width
sizeImgDim(1) = src.Height

'if the max and min are larger than the original size, therefore follow the original
If sizeImgDim(0) > _MaxWidth OrElse sizeImgDim(1) > _MaxHeight Then
Dim imageRatio As Decimal = CDec(sizeImgDim(0)) / CDec(sizeImgDim(1))
Dim w As Decimal = imageRatio * CDec(_MaxHeight)
If w > _MaxWidth Then

sizeImgDim(0) = _MaxWidth
Else
sizeImgDim(0) = Convert.ToInt32(w)
End If

Dim h As Decimal = CDec(_MaxWidth) / imageRatio
If h > _MaxHeight Then

sizeImgDim(1) = _MaxHeight
Else

sizeImgDim(1) = Convert.ToInt32(h)

End If
End If
Return sizeImgDim
End Function

Clean up html code and words tag in .NET

2010-04-06T09:47:00.000+08:00

How to capitalize every first letter using .NET

2010-04-06T09:40:00.000+08:00

Public Shared Function Capitalize(ByVal value As String) As String
Return System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(value)
End Function

Regex for strong password implementation

2009-07-01T15:43:00.002+08:00

Advance password

(?=^.{12,}$)((?=.*\d)(?=.*\W+))(?![.\n])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[a-z]).*$

Passwords will contain at least (1) upper case letter
Passwords will contain at least (1) lower case letter
Passwords will contain at least (1) number or special character
Passwords will contain at least (12) characters in length

Basic password

(?=^.{12,}$)((?=.*\d)(?=.*\W+))(?![.\n])(?=.*[a-z]).*$

Passwords will contain at least (1) letter
Passwords will contain at least (1) number or special character
Passwords will contain at least (12) characters in length

how to add mata keyword & meta description in ASP.NET?

2009-05-11T11:49:00.003+08:00

There is no easy way to add but I have a simple method to introduce

pageEx.cs

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using
System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using
System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

public class PageEx : System.Web.UI.Page
{

private HtmlMeta
metaDescription = new HtmlMeta();
private HtmlMeta metaKeywords = new
HtmlMeta();

public string Description
{
get { return
metaDescription.Content; }
set { metaDescription.Content = value; }
}

public string[] Keywords
{
get
{
if
(metaKeywords.Content == null)
{
return new string[] { "" };
}
else
{
return metaKeywords.Content.Split(new char[] { ',' });
}
}

set
{
if (value != null)
{
metaKeywords.Content =
string.Join(",", value);
}
}
}

public PageEx()
{
Init += new EventHandler(PageEx_Init);
}

void PageEx_Init(object
sender, EventArgs e)
{
//Add the description Meta control
metaDescription.Name = "description";
Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaDescription);
//Add the keywords Meta
control
metaKeywords.Name = "keywords";
Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaKeywords);
}

}

someasp.aspx

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

this.Description = "the power 123";
this.Keywords = new string[] {
"Enquiries", "enquiry", "contact", "contacts", "email", "tel" };

}

Hope this helps :)

a simple method to manipulate data using sql using .net

2009-04-28T16:09:00.004+08:00

public static DataTable ExecuteSQL(string sql, Dictionary parameters)
{
DataTable dt = new DataTable("DataTable");
using (SqlConnection myConnection = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["localConnectionString"].ConnectionString))
{
myConnection.Open();
SqlCommand mySqlCommand = new SqlCommand(sql, myConnection);

if (parameters != null)
{
foreach (KeyValuePair p in parameters)
{
mySqlCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue(p.Key, p.Value);
}
}

using (SqlDataReader datareader = mySqlCommand.ExecuteReader())
{
dt.Load(datareader);
}
}
return dt;
}

//insert a tag record
Dictionary param = new Dictionary();
param.Add("@TagName", txtTagName.Text);
ExecuteSQL("INSERT TOP (200) INTO Tag(TagName) VALUES (@TagName)", param);

add or modify table column using sql server database script

2009-03-27T12:13:00.004+08:00

it is always recommended that you use script to run for modifucation rather set by using interface for this case.

Here is the trick

To add new column:

ALTER TABLE Customer ADD IsFeatured bit not NULL default 0

To modify existing column such as data type:

ALTER TABLE news ALTER COLUMN title VARCHAR(150) NOT NULL

How to run VB code and C# code in appCode folder?

2009-03-26T11:54:00.004+08:00

In the web.config, under compilation

<compilation debug="true" strict="false" explicit="true">

add,

<codeSubDirectories>
<add directoryName="VBCode" />
<add directoryName="CSCode" />
</codeSubDirectories>

VBCode and CSCode are the folders in the AppCode.

ASP.NET move to next record or move to previous record

2009-03-19T00:12:00.009+08:00

Basically, ASP.NET does not have move next or move previous function, therefore you need to manually use a for loop to determine the position of the target index and then use position + 1 or position -1 to get the next or previous record.

If you are developing a windows form then you are lucky you can use BindingContext[dataTable].Position + 1 or BindingContext[dataTable].Position - 1.

Well, we are talking about ASP.NET here, if we are populating a few hundreds items and use for loop to get the position and I think it is fine. Or u might be using datatable something like

DataTable dt = new DataTable();
dt.Rows.IndexOf(datarow);

to get the index and from there u manipulate it.

However what if we have 1 million of records in the table? That would be crazy!

The more efficient way is to use over keyword which only available in SQL Server 2005 or later. The idea is to get the previous record and the next record given the record identity. I just have to get 2 records and I just want the first record as previous and second record as next. So here is the trick.

subcategoryid, name

31	Game Downloads
32	Computers & Accessories
33	Software
34	PC Games
35	Computer Components
36	Office Products & Supplies

select top(1) row_number() over (order by subcategoryid desc) row, subcategoryid, name from subcategory where subcategoryid<33
union
select top(1) row_number() over (order by subcategoryid) row, subcategoryid, name from subcategory where subcategoryid>33

results:

1 32 Computers & Accessories
1 34 PC Games

p/s please note that this solution only applicable for int column having auto numbering enabled only. the subcategoryid is the primary key, auto number and numaric

SQL upcoming date

2009-03-18T10:55:00.002+08:00

if you want to get the up coming listing such as event you can do a SQL query like this:

SELECT EventID, EventName, StartDate, EndDate, EventTime, EventLink
FROM Events
WHERE (StartDate BETWEEN GETDATE() AND GETDATE() + 45) AND (GETDATE() BETWEEN StartDate AND EndDate + 1)
ORDER BY StartDate

get data from excel using linq .net

2009-03-12T13:25:00.005+08:00

You might want to read excel file and import the data from the excel into your .net application. Therefore you need a service that provide you this functionality. Here is the class that you can use it.

I suggest you to import the data and store into a DataTable and from there you can start to manipulate it. You can also use a linq to query the data. Is that simple and easy?

Initialization

PrivatePropertyExcel ppe;
DataTable currentExcelDataTable;

private void btnTestConnection_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
try
{
if (openFileDialog1.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK && txtSheetName.Text != "")
{

ppe = new PrivatePropertyExcel(openFileDialog1.FileName, txtSheetName.Text);
currentExcelDataTable = ppe.ExcelProvider.GetDataTable();
gridSource.DataSource = currentExcelDataTable;
gridTarget.DataSource = null;

btnValidate.Enabled = true;
txtStatus.Text = "";
}
else
{
if (txtSheetName.Text == "")
{
MessageBox.Show("Please enter sheet name");
}
}
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}
}

Calling function

public List<string> GetPropertyType(int columnIndex)
{
List<string> propertyTypeList = new List<string>();

var propertyTypes =
(from e in ppe.ExcelProvider
where e.GetString(columnIndex).Trim() != ""
select e.GetString(columnIndex).Trim()).Distinct();

foreach (string pt in propertyTypes)
{
if (!propertyTypeList.Contains(pt))
{
propertyTypeList.Add(pt);
}
}

return propertyTypeList;
}

Class

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data.OleDb;
using System.Collections;
using System.Data;

namespace ReplicatorServices
{
public class ExcelRow
{
List<object> columns;

public ExcelRow()
{
columns = new List<object>();
}

internal void AddColumn(object value)
{
columns.Add(value);
}

public object this[int index]
{
get { return columns[index]; }
}

public string GetString(int index)
{
if (columns[index] is DBNull)
{
return null;
}
return columns[index].ToString();
}

public int Count
{
get { return this.columns.Count; }
}
}

public class ExcelProvider:IEnumerable<ExcelRow>
{
private string sheet;
private string filePath;
private List<ExcelRow> rows;
private string connectionString = @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source={0};Extended Properties= ""Excel 8.0;HDR=YES;""";

public ExcelProvider()
{
rows = new List<ExcelRow>();
}

public static ExcelProvider Create(string filePath, string sheet)
{
ExcelProvider provider = new ExcelProvider();
provider.sheet = sheet;
provider.filePath = filePath;
return provider;
}

public DataTable GetDataTable()
{
DataTable dt= new DataTable();
connectionString = string.Format(connectionString, filePath);
rows.Clear();
using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connectionString))
{
conn.Open();
using (OleDbCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand())
{
cmd.CommandText = "select DISTINCT * from [" + sheet + "$] ";
using (OleDbDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
dt.Load(reader);
}
}
}

return dt;
}

public DataTable GetDataTable(string sqlCommand)
{
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
connectionString = string.Format(connectionString, filePath);
rows.Clear();
using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connectionString))
{
conn.Open();
using (OleDbCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand())
{
cmd.CommandText = sqlCommand;
using (OleDbDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
dt.Load(reader);
}
}
}

return dt;
}
public List<string> GetColumnsName()
{
List<string> columnlist = new List<string>();
connectionString = string.Format(connectionString, filePath);
rows.Clear();
using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connectionString))
{
conn.Open();
using (OleDbCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand())
{
cmd.CommandText = "select * from [" + sheet + "$]";
using (OleDbDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{
for (int i = 0; i < reader.FieldCount; i++)
{
columnlist.Add(reader.GetName(i).Trim());
}
}
}
}

return columnlist;
}

private void Load()
{
connectionString = string.Format(connectionString, filePath);
rows.Clear();
using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connectionString))
{
conn.Open();
using (OleDbCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand())
{
cmd.CommandText = "select * from [" + sheet + "$]";
using (OleDbDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
{

while (reader.Read())
{
ExcelRow newRow = new ExcelRow();
for(int count = 0; count < reader.FieldCount; count++) {
newRow.AddColumn(reader[count]);
}
rows.Add(newRow);
}
}
}
}
}

public IEnumerator<ExcelRow> GetEnumerator()
{
Load();
return rows.GetEnumerator();
}

IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
{
Load();
return rows.GetEnumerator();
}

}
}

Get html tag using regex .net

2009-03-12T13:14:00.002+08:00

Let say you want to get a specific tag from the html, you need to use regex to scan and grab it. here is the example :)

private string FixedImgHtml(string html, int fixedwidth)
{
string input = html;
MatchCollection mc = Regex.Matches(input, "<img[a-zA-Z0-9_\\^\\$\\.\\\\{\\[\\}\\]\$\$\\*\\+\\?\\\\~`!@#%&-=;:'\",/\\n\\s]*>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
foreach (Match m in mc)
{
input = input.Replace(m.Value, m.Value + " onload='AutoImageResizing(this, "+ fixedwidth.ToString()+")'");
}
return input;
}

dynamic sql generated column using data

2009-03-06T18:40:00.002+08:00

Sometimes we want dynamically create a column by using data and not having table structure. You can do it having this sql statement

select *, LFV1.Description as DevName,LFV2.Description as Location
from
listing L
LEFT OUTER JOIN ListingFieldValue LFV1 ON L.ListingID =
LFV1.ListingID AND LFV1.ListingFieldTypeID = '1'
LEFT OUTER JOIN
ListingFieldValue LFV2 ON L.ListingID = LFV2.ListingID AND
LFV2.ListingFieldTypeID = '2'
WHERE L.listingid = 1

using jquery to create check box for each item

2009-02-27T18:06:00.003+08:00

if you want to create a check box each of the item with toggle functionality use this code snippet

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {

$("#<%=btnSendEnquiryList.ClientID%>").click(function(event) {
var hasItemSelected = false;
$("#<%=dlNewDev.ClientID%> :checkbox").attr("checked", function() {
if ($(this).attr("checked") == true) {
hasItemSelected = true;
$(this).preventDefault();
} else {
hasItemSelected = false;
}
});

if (hasItemSelected == false) {
alert("There is no listing selected. Please select at least 1 listing.");
return false;
}
});

$("#<%=chkCheckedAll.ClientID%>").click(function() {
$("#<%=dlNewDev.ClientID%> :checkbox").attr("checked", function() {
if ($(this).attr("checked") != true) {
$(this).attr("checked", "checked")
} else {
$(this).removeAttr("checked")
}
});

});

});
</script>

set/get selected value from select option / dropdownlist using jquery

2009-02-27T14:43:00.004+08:00

Here is an example of how to set/get selected value from select option / dropdownlist using jquery

To get a selected value

var selectedItemText = $('#<%=ddlCurrency.ClientID%>
option:selected').val();

To set an option value to be selected

$('#<%=ddlLocation.ClientID%> option:contains(' + location +
')').attr("selected", true);

Failed to load viewstate.

2009-02-25T19:52:00.002+08:00

if you encounter this error

Failed to load viewstate. The control tree into which viewstate is being loaded
must match the control tree that was used to save viewstate during the previous
request. For example, when adding controls dynamically, the controls added
during a post-back

Make sure the related control is set to false

EnableViewState="false"

Create thumbnail image using jquery or javascript

2009-02-25T11:46:00.003+08:00

If you want to maintain the proportion of the image when creating thumbnail for your website, please use this tested script

<script src="js/jquery-1.2.6.min.js"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<style
type="text/css">
.thumbnail
{
vertical-align:middle;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" >
$(document).ready(
function AutoImageResizing(src, fixedSize) {
var
width = src.width;
var height = src.height;
var ratio = width / height;
if (width > fixedSize) {
src.width = fixedSize

}
if
(height > fixedSize) {
var sizedwidth = fixedSize / ratio;
var
sizedheight = fixedSize / ratio;
if (height > width) {
if (height
> sizedwidth) {
src.height = fixedSize
}
if (sizedwidth
> fixedSize) {
src.width = src.width * ratio;
} else {
src.height = src.height * ratio;
}
} else {
src.width =
fixedSize
}
}
}
);
</script>

HTML

<img class="thumbnail"
src="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/10/05/love.jpg"
onload="AutoImageResizing(this,100)" />
<img class="thumbnail"
src="http://images.google.com.my/intl/en_ALL/images/images_hp.gif"
onload="AutoImageResizing(this,100)"/>

Do you find this useful, please let me know! :)

Namespace Manager or XsltContext needed. This query has a prefix, variable, or user-defined function.

2009-02-24T10:13:00.002+08:00

if you got this error dealing with XML

{"Namespace Manager or XsltContext needed. This query has a prefix, variable, or
user-defined function."}

You need to make sure that you include the XmlNamespaceManager

//Setting up NSManager
XmlNamespaceManager man = new XmlNamespaceManager(rssDoc.NameTable);
man.AddNamespace("msncp", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com/contentpublishing/content");

take a look at the example here
http://carso-owen.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-get-data-from-msn-navigation.html

string manipulation websites you must know as web designer or perhaps blogger

2009-02-24T09:59:00.003+08:00

Some times some web editor doesn't allow you to post certain characters. Here u can hack it by encode the html
http://www.string-functions.com/htmlencode.aspx

You got a string put you want it a one line sentance, here is the best website to remote the breaks
http://www.textfixer.com/tools/remove-line-breaks.php

You u want to generate dummy text here is the
Lorem ipsum site
http://www.lipsum.com/

How to get data from msn navigation feed rss using .net

2009-02-24T09:29:00.006+08:00

I have a project to develop a website for MSN and I have to read the feed (Microsoft own schema). Here is the code to save ur time :)

Let say i want to get a feed from this link

http://sg.msn.com/rss/navfeedrssensg.aspx

By using few lines of codes to get the feed:

MSNNavFeedMenu feedmenu = new
MSNNavFeedMenu("http://sg.msn.com/rss/navfeedrssensg.aspx");
string feedLinkMenu =
feedmenu.CreateNavLinks(feedmenu.GetNavLinks(4), 5);
string feedToolLinkMenu =
feedmenu.CreateNavToolLinks(feedmenu.GetNavToolLinks(), 5);

Here is the class:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.SessionState;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public class NavFeedRss
{

private string _Title;
private string _Link;
private string _Icon;
private string _Description;

public string Description
{
get
{
return _Description;
}
}

public string Title
{
get
{
return _Title;
}
}

public string Link
{
get
{
return _Link;
}
}

public string Icon
{
get
{
return _Icon;
}
}

public NavFeedRss(string title, string description, string link, string icon)
{
_Title = title;
_Link = link;
_Icon = icon;
_Title = title;
_Description = description;
}

}

/// <summary>
/// Summary description for MSNNavFeedMenu
/// </summary>
public class MSNNavFeedMenu
{
private string rssUrl;

public MSNNavFeedMenu(string rsslink)
{
rssUrl = rsslink;
}

public string CreateNavLinks(List<NavFeedRss> RssNavMenu, int columns)
{
string itemTitles = String.Empty;

if (RssNavMenu.Count > 0)
{
//Create list

//Create dynamic row with specified fixed column
int row = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor(Convert.ToDouble(RssNavMenu.Count / columns)));
int reminder = RssNavMenu.Count % columns;

int c = 0;
int temp = 0;
for (int r = 1; r <= row; r++)
{
itemTitles += "<ul class='linklist1'>";
for (c = temp; c < (columns * r); c++)
{
if (r == 1)
{
itemTitles += "<li class='first'>";
}
else
{
itemTitles += "<li>";
}

itemTitles += "<a href='" + RssNavMenu[c].Link + "'>" + RssNavMenu[c].Title + "</a>";
itemTitles += "</li>";

}
temp = columns * r;
itemTitles += "</ul>";
}

//Add reminder item
itemTitles += "<ul class='linklist1'>";

for (c = temp; c < temp + reminder; c++)
{
if (c == temp)
{
itemTitles += "<li class='first'>";
}
else
{
itemTitles += "<li>";
}

itemTitles += "<a href='" + RssNavMenu[c].Link + "'>" + RssNavMenu[c].Title + "</a>";
itemTitles += "</li>";
}
itemTitles += "</ul>";

//Closing list

}

return itemTitles;
}

public string CreateNavToolLinks(List<NavFeedRss> RssNavMenu, int columns)
{

string itemTitles = String.Empty;

if (RssNavMenu.Count > 0)
{

//Create dynamic row with specified fixed column
int row = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor(Convert.ToDouble(RssNavMenu.Count / columns)));
int reminder = RssNavMenu.Count % columns;

int c = 0;
int temp = 0;
for (int r = 1; r <= row; r++)
{
itemTitles += "<ul class='linkedimglinklist1 cf'>";
for (c = temp; c < (columns * r); c++)
{
if (r == 1)
{
itemTitles += "<li class='first'>";
}
else
{
itemTitles += "<li>";
}

itemTitles += "<a href='" + RssNavMenu[c].Link + "'><img src='" + RssNavMenu[c].Icon + "' width='25' height='20' alt='Windows Live Messenger' /><span><strong>" + RssNavMenu[c].Title + "</strong></span></a>";
itemTitles += "</li>";

}
temp = columns * r;
itemTitles += "</ul>";
}

//Add reminder item
itemTitles += "<ul class='linkedimglinklist1 cf'>";

for (c = temp; c < temp + reminder; c++)
{
if (c == temp)
{
itemTitles += "<li class='first'>";
}
else
{
itemTitles += "<li>";
}

itemTitles += "<a href='" + RssNavMenu[c].Link + "'><img src='" + RssNavMenu[c].Icon + "' width='25' height='20' alt='Windows Live Messenger' /><span><strong>" + RssNavMenu[c].Title + "</strong></span></a>";

itemTitles += "</li>";
}
itemTitles += "</ul>";

//Closing list

}

return itemTitles;
}

public List<NavFeedRss> GetNavToolLinks()
{

List<NavFeedRss> rsstitles = new List<NavFeedRss>();

WebRequest myRequest = WebRequest.Create(rssUrl);
WebResponse myResponse = myRequest.GetResponse();

Stream rssStream = myResponse.GetResponseStream();
XmlDocument rssDoc = new XmlDocument();
rssDoc.Load(rssStream);

//Setting up NSManager
XmlNamespaceManager man = new XmlNamespaceManager(rssDoc.NameTable);
man.AddNamespace("msncp", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com/contentpublishing/content");

XmlNodeList rssItemsImg = rssDoc.SelectNodes("rss/channel/msncp:gtl/msncp:networklists/msncp:toollist/msncp:tool/msncp:imagelink/msncp:image", man);
XmlNodeList rssItemsLnk = rssDoc.SelectNodes("rss/channel/msncp:gtl/msncp:networklists/msncp:toollist/msncp:tool/msncp:imagelink/msncp:link", man);

string title = "";
string link = "";
string description = "";
string enclosure = "";

for (int i = 0; i < rssItemsLnk.Count; i++)
{
XmlNode rssDetail;

rssDetail = rssItemsImg.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("msncp:src", man);
if (rssDetail != null)
{
enclosure = rssDetail.InnerText;
}
else
{
enclosure = "";
}

rssDetail = rssItemsImg.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("msncp:alternatetext", man);
if (rssDetail != null)
{
description = rssDetail.InnerText;
}
else
{
description = "";
}

rssDetail = rssItemsLnk.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("msncp:text", man);
if (rssDetail != null)
{
title = rssDetail.InnerText;
}
else
{
title = "";
}

rssDetail = rssItemsLnk.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("msncp:url", man);
if (rssDetail != null)
{
link = rssDetail.InnerText;
}
else
{
link = "";
}

rsstitles.Add(new NavFeedRss(title, description, link, enclosure));

}

return rsstitles;
}

public List<NavFeedRss> GetNavLinks(int start)
{

List<NavFeedRss> rsstitles = new List<NavFeedRss>();

WebRequest myRequest = WebRequest.Create(rssUrl);
WebResponse myResponse = myRequest.GetResponse();

Stream rssStream = myResponse.GetResponseStream();
XmlDocument rssDoc = new XmlDocument();
rssDoc.Load(rssStream);

XmlNodeList rssItems = rssDoc.SelectNodes("rss/channel/item");

string title = "";
string link = "";
string description = "";
string enclosure = "";

for (int i = start; i < rssItems.Count; i++)
{
XmlNode rssDetail;

rssDetail = rssItems.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("title");
if (rssDetail != null)
{
title = rssDetail.InnerText;
}
else
{
title = "";
}

rssDetail = rssItems.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("enclosure");
if (rssDetail != null)
{
enclosure = rssDetail.Attributes["url"].InnerText;
}
else
{
enclosure = "";
}

rssDetail = rssItems.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("link");
if (rssDetail != null)
{
link = rssDetail.InnerText;
}
else
{
link = "";
}

rssDetail = rssItems.Item(i).SelectSingleNode("description");
if (rssDetail != null)
{
description = rssDetail.InnerText;
}
else
{
description = "";
}

rsstitles.Add(new NavFeedRss(title, description, link, enclosure));

}

return rsstitles;
}

}

using store procedure is not my style in .net

2009-02-22T11:22:00.006+08:00

During the past I am quite excited about using store procedure and I used it quite often for some performance reason and right now I found out that performance gain is a big trade off of the code maintainability and flexibility in my system. The reason I say so is because when i want to perform a select statement for instance, I need to create a new store procedure and over the time I have a hard time to maintain it. Actually, putting SQL statements inside application code is far more better than having storing store procedure over the server. Just think about by concatenate sql in a string with some condition and forget about store procedure which create so much complication. What do you think? Is life more simpler?

jquery get and set value dealing with asp.net control

2009-02-20T10:05:00.003+08:00

this demo show that how I get value from the lblSearchType (Label) and populate data into txtKeyword (TextBox) asp.net control when I click different radio button using jquery

$('#<%=rdKeywordSearch.ClientID%>').click(function() {
$('#<%=lblSearchType.ClientID%>').text("Keyword");
$('#<%=txtKeyword.ClientID%>_input').attr("value", "Keyword");
$('#<%=txtKeyword.ClientID%>_input').attr("value", "Enter keyword here...");
});

$('#<%=rdLocationSearch.ClientID%>').click(function() {
$('#<%=lblSearchType.ClientID%>').text("Location");
$('#<%=txtKeyword.ClientID%>_input').attr("value", "Location");
$('#<%=txtKeyword.ClientID%>_input').attr("value", "Enter location here...");
});

Resize picture function in C#

2009-02-18T14:39:00.002+08:00

using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Drawing2D;
//w means the output size of the image width

public static bool ResizePhoto(string src, string dest, int w)
{
System.Drawing.Image imgTmp = default(System.Drawing.Image);
double sf = 0;
System.Drawing.Bitmap imgFoto = default(System.Drawing.Bitmap);
imgTmp = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(src);
if ((imgTmp.Width > w))
{
sf = imgTmp.Width / w;
imgFoto = new System.Drawing.Bitmap(w, (int)(imgTmp.Height / sf));
Rectangle recDest = new Rectangle(0, 0, w, imgFoto.Height);
Graphics gphCrop = Graphics.FromImage(imgFoto);
gphCrop.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.HighQuality;
gphCrop.CompositingQuality = CompositingQuality.HighQuality;
gphCrop.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.High;
gphCrop.DrawImage(imgTmp, recDest, 0, 0, imgTmp.Width, imgTmp.Height, GraphicsUnit.Pixel);
}
else
{
imgFoto = (Bitmap)imgTmp;
}
System.Drawing.Imaging.Encoder myEncoder = default(System.Drawing.Imaging.Encoder);
System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameter myEncoderParameter = default(System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameter);
System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameters myEncoderParameters = default(System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameters);
System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageCodecInfo[] arrayICI = System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageCodecInfo.GetImageEncoders();
System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageCodecInfo jpegICI = null;
int x = 0;
for (x = 0; x <= arrayICI.Length - 1; x++)
{
if ((arrayICI[x].FormatDescription.Equals("JPEG")))
{
jpegICI = arrayICI[x];
break;
}
}
myEncoder = System.Drawing.Imaging.Encoder.Quality;
myEncoderParameters = new System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameters(1);
myEncoderParameter = new System.Drawing.Imaging.EncoderParameter(myEncoder, 60L);
myEncoderParameters.Param[0] = myEncoderParameter;
try
{
imgFoto.Save(dest, jpegICI, myEncoderParameters);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw ex;
}
imgFoto.Dispose();
imgTmp.Dispose();
return true;
}

ajax json jquery call with passing parameters using ASP.Net

2009-02-17T15:13:00.005+08:00

If you want to load a content faster than before, you need to use ajax to load content. To get started you need to:

HTML

<div id="EventContent" class="loading"/>

SCRIPT

$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "RSSReader.asmx/GetRSSReader",
data:
"{controlName:'events.ascx'}",
contentType: "application/json;
charset=utf-8",
dataType: "json",
success: function(data)
{
$('#EventContent').removeClass('loading').html(data);
}
});

APP_CODE

[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo
=
WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
[System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService]
public
class RSSReader : System.Web.Services.WebService {
[WebMethod]
public
string GetRSSReader(string controlName)
{
Page page = new
Page();
UserControl ctl =
(UserControl)page.LoadControl("~/controls/" +
controlName);
page.Controls.Add(ctl);
StringWriter writer = new
StringWriter();
HttpContext.Current.Server.Execute(page, writer,
false);
return writer.ToString();
}

}

Notice that the bold text is the parameter name and it have to be same. It is recommended to be string

check string contains chinese character or not in C#

2009-01-14T09:23:00.003+08:00

string word = "是集室內";

char fo = word[0];

UnicodeCategory cat = char.GetUnicodeCategory(fo);
if (cat == UnicodeCategory.OtherLetter)
{
//chinese char
}
else
{
//english char
}

Remove HTML tags using regex .NET

2008-12-12T10:49:00.001+08:00

private string StripTagsRegex(string text)
{
return Regex.Replace(text, "<.*?>", string.Empty);
}

ASP.NET validation problem with Response.Redirect

2008-11-28T00:15:00.003+08:00

What is the correct why of doing validation? Why the the form doesn't validated if Response.Redirect code sit under the command button?

answer:

if(Page.IsValid){

Response.Redirect("abc.aspx");

}

Otherwise, the page do not have chance to be validated.

Put ASP.NET dynamic data into your existing application

2008-11-28T00:13:00.003+08:00

Sometimes we might want to move the dynamic data folder to another directory so here is the tricks

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc837197.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc837200.aspx

Hope it helps

Running .NET 3.5 in .NET 2.0 environment

2008-11-27T09:38:00.003+08:00

If you love linq and want to get it runs in .NET Framework 2.0 environment, don't worry just copy those files below into your application bin and do some settings in the web.config and it will works.

System.Core.dll
System.Data.DataSetExtensions.dll
System.Data.Linq.dll
System.Web.dll
System.Web.Extensions.dll
System.Xml.Linq.dll

Where to find all these files?

C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\v3.5

Globalization & Localization in ASP.NET

2008-11-09T23:09:00.002+08:00

<strong><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?culture=en-US">English</a></strong> | 日本語 |<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?culture=zh-HK">中国</a> | Deutsch | 한국어

if (Request.QueryString["culture"] != null)
{
Session["Culture"] = Request.QueryString["culture"];
}

if (Session["Culture"] != null)
{

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo(Session["Culture"].ToString());
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo(Session["Culture"].ToString());
}

Create Tag Cloud C# 2.0 - The simplest and fastest way

2008-11-09T13:25:00.005+08:00

Output:

palad1 palad2 palad3 palad4

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace WebApplication1
{

public class ItemFeq
{

private string _PhotoName;

public string PhotoName
{
get { return _PhotoName; }
set { _PhotoName = value; }
}
private int _Count;

public int Count
{
get { return _Count; }
set { _Count = value; }
}

private int _Size;

public int Size
{
get { return _Size; }
set { _Size = value; }
}

public ItemFeq(string photoname, int count, int size)
{
_PhotoName = photoname;
_Count = count;
_Size = size;
}
}

public class ItemTag
{
private int _ItemID;

public int PhotoID
{
get { return _ItemID; }
set { _ItemID = value; }
}
private string _Tag;

public string Tag
{
get { return _Tag; }
set { _Tag = value; }
}

public ItemTag(int itemid, string tag)
{
_Tag = tag;
_ItemID = itemid;
}
}

public class ItemTagComparer : IComparer<ItemTag>
{
public int Compare(ItemTag x, ItemTag y)
{
if (x.Tag == y.Tag) { return 0; } else { return x.Tag.CompareTo(y.Tag); }
}

}

public class ItemFeqByCountComparer : IComparer<ItemFeq>
{
public int Compare(ItemFeq x, ItemFeq y)
{
if (x.Count == y.Count)
{ return 0; }
else
{ return x.Count.CompareTo(y.Count); }
}

}

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{

public string CreateTagCloud(List<ItemTag> tags, int baseSize)
{

tags.Sort(new ItemTagComparer());

List<ItemFeq> photofeqlist = new List<ItemFeq>();

foreach (ItemTag ptag in tags)
{
if (photofeqlist.Exists(delegate(ItemFeq pf) { return pf.PhotoName == ptag.Tag; }))
{
photofeqlist.Find(delegate(ItemFeq pq) { return pq.PhotoName == ptag.Tag; }).Count += 1;
photofeqlist.Find(delegate(ItemFeq pq) { return pq.PhotoName == ptag.Tag; }).Size += 1;
}
else
{
photofeqlist.Add(new ItemFeq(ptag.Tag, 1, baseSize));
}
}

photofeqlist.Sort(new ItemFeqByCountComparer());
photofeqlist.Reverse();

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

int sum = 0;
foreach (ItemFeq pf in photofeqlist)
{
sum += pf.Count;
}

foreach (ItemFeq pf in photofeqlist)
{
sb.Append("<span style='font-size:" + (pf.Size / (sum / photofeqlist.Count)) * baseSize + "pt'>" + pf.PhotoName + " </span>");

}
return sb.ToString();
}

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

}

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

List<ItemTag> phototags = new List<ItemTag>();
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(123, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(124, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(125, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(126, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(126, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad2"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad3"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(123, "palad3"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(124, "palad3"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(125, "palad4"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(126, "palad4"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(121, "palad1"));
phototags.Add(new ItemTag(122, "palad1"));

Literal1.Text = CreateTagCloud(phototags, 12);

}
}
}

Encode HTML

2008-11-09T02:59:00.002+08:00

do u know u need to encode some html code so that it will display correctly in some website because those website afraid you inject some dangerous scripts into their website.

Here is the translation:
http://demo.nickname.net/demo/testpak/encode.pl

The most simple way to group by in a list collection using .NET 2.0 (IEqualityComparer & IComparer) and .NET 3.5 (Linq) functions

2008-11-09T02:45:00.010+08:00

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Security;
using System.Web.UI;
using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls;
using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace WebApplication1
{
public class PhotoFeq
{
private string _PhotoName;

public string PhotoName
{
get { return _PhotoName; }
set { _PhotoName = value; }
}
private int _Count;

public int Count
{
get { return _Count; }
set { _Count = value; }
}

public PhotoFeq(string photoname, int count)
{
_PhotoName = photoname;
_Count = count;
}
}

public class PhotoTag
{
private int _PhotoID;

public int PhotoID
{
get { return _PhotoID; }
set { _PhotoID = value; }
}
private string _Tag;

public string Tag
{
get { return _Tag; }
set { _Tag = value; }
}

public PhotoTag(int photoid, string tag)
{
_Tag = tag;
_PhotoID = photoid;
}
}

public class PhotoTagEqualityComparer : IEqualityComparer<PhotoTag>
{
public bool Equals(PhotoTag x, PhotoTag y)
{
if (x.Tag == y.Tag )
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}

public int GetHashCode(PhotoTag obj)
{
return base.GetHashCode();
}
}

public class PhotoTagComparer : IComparer<PhotoTag>
{
public int Compare(PhotoTag x, PhotoTag y)
{
if (x.Tag == y.Tag) { return 0; } else { return x.Tag.CompareTo(y.Tag); }
}

}

public partial class _Default : System.Web.UI.Page
{

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{

}

protected void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
//output
//kiki 1
//gigi 2
//jojo 3
//sasa 3
//lala 6
//nini 6

List<PhotoTag> phototags = new List<PhotoTag>();
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(121, "lala"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(122, "lala"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(123, "lala"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(124, "lala"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(125, "lala"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(126, "lala"));

phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(127, "jojo"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(128, "jojo"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(129, "jojo"));

phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(120, "gigi"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1201, "gigi"));

phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1202, "kiki"));

phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1203, "sasa"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1204, "sasa"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1205, "sasa"));

phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1206, "nini"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1207, "nini"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1208, "nini"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1209, "nini"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1211, "nini"));
phototags.Add(new PhotoTag(1212, "nini"));

//3.5 method
var feqTags = from n in phototags
group n by n.Tag into g
orderby g.Count()
select new { PhotoName = g.Key , Count = g.Count() };

foreach (var g in feqTags)
{
Response.Write(g.PhotoName + " " + g.Count + "<br/>");
}

//2.0 method
phototags.Sort(new PhotoTagComparer());

List<PhotoFeq> photofeqlist = new List<PhotoFeq>();

foreach (PhotoTag ptag in phototags)
{
if (photofeqlist.Exists(delegate(PhotoFeq pf) { return pf.PhotoName == ptag.Tag; }))
{
photofeqlist.Find(delegate(PhotoFeq pq) { return pq.PhotoName == ptag.Tag; }).Count += 1;
}
else
{
photofeqlist.Add(new PhotoFeq(ptag.Tag, 1));
}
}

//search object by comparison
int j = phototags.BinarySearch(new PhotoTag(1202, "kiki"), new PhotoTagComparer());
Response.Write(phototags[j].PhotoID);

//get distinct in list
List<PhotoTag> distinctPhotoTag = phototags.Distinct(new PhotoTagEqualityComparer()).ToList<PhotoTag>();

}
}
}

ADO.NET C# common error dealing with inserting NULL value

2008-08-27T09:51:00.003+08:00

If you are using c# and you are trying to insert null value into a table by using a shorthand something like below

param.Add("@abc", strAbc == "" ? null : strAbc);

it will not work. And you will got this error such as below:

Parameterized Query '(@Type nvarchar(2),@GroupType nvarchar(1),@Keyword' expects parameter @Type, which was not supplied.

To solve this problem you need to do a trick something like this

param.Add("@abc", strAbc == "" ? (object)DBNull.Value : strAbc);

change from null to (object)DBNull.Value

However, in VB.NET you do not need to cast.

Query data using sql and return results as datatable. Super fast method for ADO.NET!

2008-08-20T17:46:00.006+08:00

You need to an easy way to query data from the database and fill into the datatable. Here is quick, dirty and secured trick

The method:

public static DataTable GetTable(string sql, Dictionary parameters)
{
DataTable dt = new DataTable("DataTable");
using (SqlConnection myConnection = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["dbConnectionString"].ConnectionString))
{
myConnection.Open();
SqlCommand mySqlCommand = new SqlCommand(sql, myConnection);

if (parameters != null)
{
foreach (KeyValuePair p in parameters)
{
mySqlCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue(p.Key, p.Value);
}
}

using (SqlDataReader datareader = mySqlCommand.ExecuteReader())
{
dt.Load(datareader);
}
}
return dt;
}

The query:

Dictionary sqlParams = new Dictionary();
sqlParams.Add("@id", 123);
devReview = DataHelper.GetTable("select * from sometable where id = @id", sqlParams).DefaultView;

Windows Vista Ultimate - bootmgr is compressed

2008-08-03T22:57:00.004+08:00

Today i've tried to install the windows vista ultimate 64bit to build up a 64bit workstation so that i could test to program that runs 64bit. Guess what? A Mesaage shown to me after i finish my vista installation. It just

bootmgr is compressed

prompt a dummy message asking me to press ctrl+alt+del. This intruction does help because it just restarts my pc and appear the message next and over again.

Luckly, i found a solution to this problem. If you encounter this, please use the Vista DVD to boot up your pc and wait until you will see a option that says "Repair your computer" Just click on that.

Later you will see a button "Load Driver", click click on that and go to "My Computer". After all, just right click => Properties. And just make sure the drive is not compressed. Unchecked the "Compress drive to save more space" something like (counld't remember exactly). for just in case the drive is compressed. And you need to do it for each drive. This process take ages, which cause your pc seem to be hang for a long period of time but wait don't restart it until it finishes. It will return you to the main menu. Trust me!

Anyway, I am going to test out my new PC running AMD 5000+ 2.6Ghz dual core. Don't be surprise to see more updates on the tips to make a program that utilizing the multi core processor using PLINQ!

homepage takes too long to load

2008-06-06T00:04:00.002+08:00

this is the most common problem we face and most often we keep the page small in size and use less images.

But, what if my homepages a lot of stuffs to get loaded which is a must requirement? The only thing you can do it to Ajax it! you need to separate a page into several html block of codes and load it separately.

What i did is using the ASP.NET AJAX update panel to warp the html code and use timer to load it later. I think this is not really a correct why but it is better then doing nothing.

What else i can do? do you have any solution suggest for me?

A simple way to get a content from an URL over the internet

2008-06-01T03:48:00.002+08:00

sometimes we want to get the content over the internet and process the content, here is a super simple method that i discovered.

using System.Net;
using System.IO;

public static string GetWebContentString(string
url)
{
HttpWebRequest httpReq =
(HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
HttpWebResponse httpRes =
(HttpWebResponse)httpReq.GetResponse();
Stream fs =
httpRes.GetResponseStream();
StreamReader sr = new
StreamReader(fs);
return sr.ReadToEnd();
}

How to call store procedure using .NET

2008-05-26T11:36:00.004+08:00

This is how I call store procedure using .NET having passing input value and return by output value

public static int GetSearchCount(string country)
{
int count = 0;
using (SqlConnection conn = new
SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["dbnamestr"].ConnectionString))
{
conn.Open();
SqlCommand objCmd = new
SqlCommand("sp_SearchCount", conn);
objCmd.CommandType =
CommandType.StoredProcedure;
SqlParameter paramTotal = new
SqlParameter("@Total", SqlDbType.Int);
paramTotal.Direction =
ParameterDirection.ReturnValue;
objCmd.Parameters.Add(paramTotal);
objCmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@Country", country);
objCmd.ExecuteScalar();
count = (int)paramTotal.Value;
}
return
count;
}

Using stored procedure and inline sql in your application

2008-05-26T01:43:00.010+08:00

Programmers always ask which is better and which should they choose. Is store procedure has better performance or inline sql with ORM is better at gaining productivity? Well depends who you are, what applications you develop, the answers are very different from person to person.

I use store procedure when I knew the query is complicated which requires multiple joins tables and I knew that i will query it very often, hence using store procedure will make a significant different in performance gains. For example, you run the optimized precompile sql statements. you delegate the computation of data within the sql server and minimize sql query back and forth and also you make your query pretty secured by using SP

Meanwhile using inline sql is not a good practise unless you are using Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tools to generate those inline sql for you and all you need is to use the objects created. It is the fastest and simple way to query and manipulate the database with the power of OOP. If you are using inline sql as a short cut way to query data, you gotta becareful and takes various precautions steps to overcome sql injection attacks. Sometimes a string of sql statement hard coded in your program can be a maintenance problem because it is quite difficult to test the validity of sql statement.

FYI, I use SP for complicated queries. I use inline sql (usually generated by ORM) for simple CRUD to direct display data that do not involve calculations. Query using ORM can be more complicated and requires more resources than using the SP, so just keep things simple and understandable.

I am not bias to one or another, I just want to point out that by using the right technology in your application will have a greater benefit of sticking to one technology. Tool is created for making us easier, if you found that the tool is great, just use it, otherwise get another alternative.

Upload image to web server using webservice .NET

2008-04-03T10:31:00.003+08:00

To transfer a file to the web server, it is not necessary to use FTP to upload. You can use webservice to do so. Here is the trick:

public string CreateFileToBase64String(string path)
{
Stream fs = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open);
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
const int size = 4096;
byte[] bytes = new byte[4096];
int numBytes;
while ((numBytes = fs.Read(bytes, 0, size)) > 0)
ms.Write(bytes, 0, numBytes);
ms.Close();
fs.Close();
return Convert.ToBase64String(ms.GetBuffer());
}
public void CreateFileFromBase64String(string imageData, string path)
{
MemoryStream msf = new MemoryStream(Convert.FromBase64String(imageData));
Stream stem = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Create);
msf.WriteTo(stem);
msf.Close();
stem.Close();
}

you see things is so simple.

How to get web content from the web .NET

2008-04-03T10:01:00.002+08:00

Sometimes I need to download the html content from the internet, therefore this method is very useful.

public static void GetWebContent(string url, string saveToPath)
{
if (IsValidUrl(url))
{
HttpWebRequest httpReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
HttpWebResponse httpRes = (HttpWebResponse)httpReq.GetResponse();
Stream fs = httpRes.GetResponseStream();
FileStream fss = new FileStream(saveToPath, FileMode.Create);
const int size = 4096;
byte[] bytes = new byte[4096];
int numBytes;
while ((numBytes = fs.Read(bytes, 0, size)) > 0)
fss.Write(bytes, 0, numBytes);
fss.Close();
}
}

Find the image height and width using .NET

2008-04-03T09:59:00.000+08:00

See as simple as this:

System.Drawing.Imaging.BitmapData bit = new
System.Drawing.Imaging.BitmapData();
int height = bit.Height;

ConnectionStrings for SQL Server 2005

2008-03-26T01:03:00.002+08:00

ConnectionString for sql server 2005 look like this. Please remember dude...

<*connectionStrings>
<*add name="lala"
connectionString="server=user\sqlexpress;integrated
security=true;database=test"/>
<*/connectionStrings>

How to create xml document from database ado.net

2008-03-26T00:53:00.005+08:00

I hate to code with xml because i always forgotten the methods, therefore i blog it here so that i could help someone like me. :)

The 0utput lala.xml

<*Library>
<*Book id="1">
<*Name>Programming
<*Author>L.L Yee
<*Book id="2">
<*Name>Mathematics
<*Author>Jason Lee
<*/Library>

You need this code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using
System.Text;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using
System.Configuration;
using System.Xml;
namespace TobyXML
{
class
Program
{
static void Main(string[]
args)
{
ReadCustomerFromDB();
}
public static void
ReadCustomerFromDB()
{
string sql = "Select * from library";
string
output = "";
using (SqlConnection myConnection =
new
SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["lala"].ConnectionString))
{
myConnection.Open();
SqlCommand
mySqlCommand = new SqlCommand(sql, myConnection);
SqlDataReader datareader =
mySqlCommand.ExecuteReader();
XmlDocument xmlDoc = new
XmlDocument();
xmlDoc.CreateXmlDeclaration("1.0", "UTF-8", null);
XmlNode
nodeLibrary =
xmlDoc.CreateElement("Library");
xmlDoc.AppendChild(nodeLibrary);
while(datareader.Read())
{
XmlNode
nodeBook = xmlDoc.CreateElement("Book");
XmlAttribute attId =
xmlDoc.CreateAttribute("id");
attId.Value =
datareader["bookid"].ToString();
nodeBook.Attributes.Append(attId);
XmlNode
nodeName =
xmlDoc.CreateElement("Name");
nodeName.AppendChild(xmlDoc.CreateTextNode(datareader["bookName"].ToString()));
nodeBook.AppendChild(nodeName);
XmlNode
nodeAuthor =
xmlDoc.CreateElement("Author");
nodeBook.AppendChild(nodeAuthor);
nodeAuthor.AppendChild(xmlDoc.CreateTextNode(datareader["author"].ToString()));
nodeLibrary.AppendChild(nodeBook);
}
datareader.Close();
xmlDoc.Save(@"c:\lala.xml");
}
}
}
}

How to get HTML tag with regex?

2008-03-18T18:49:00.003+08:00

Regex this is the best one!

<*/?\w+((\s+\w+(\s*=\s*(?:".*?"'.*?'[^'">\s]+))?)+\s*\s*)/?>

please ignore the * at the <*

Get data from the database stright away! .NET

2008-03-18T18:43:00.002+08:00

Sometimes you want the most strightforward way to get data from the database without going through the N-tiers stuffs.

This technique have advantages and disadvantages,

Advantage:
The fastest data access beside store procedures.
Simple and strighforward.

Disadvantage:
Not strongly typed,
Possible of memory leak if not code propertly
Things get complicated if involve insert record or large table which have many columns.

public string ReadCustomerFromDB()
{

string sql = "Select
name, phone, age from Customers where customerid =
@customerId";

string output = "";

using (SqlConnection myConnection = new
SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Northwind"].ConnectionString))
{
myConnection.Open();

SqlCommand mySqlCommand = new SqlCommand(sql,
myConnection);

mySqlCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("@customerId", 123456);

SqlDataReader datareader =
mySqlCommand.ExecuteReader();

while
(datareader.Read())
{

Output +=
datareader["name"];

Output +=
datareader["age"];
}

datareader.Close();
}
return output;
}

Format currency using Globalization .NET

2008-03-18T18:36:00.005+08:00

There are some elegant way to format the currency such as

String.Format(“{0:c}”,100000”)

The output will be RM100,000.00 if your web.config file set as

<*system.web*>
<*globalization uiCulture="en" culture="en-MY" /*>

However this will not throw you an error if you are using windows vista. such as

The tag contains an invalid value for the 'culture' attribute.

if there is an error please refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemGlobalizationCultureInfoClassTopic.asp to find out your own culture code.

in this case i should change it to

<*globalization uiCulture="ms" culture="ms-MY" /*>

....
If you set the culture to “en-US” then the output will changed to
$100,000.00
You can check your currency symbol by using this code

System.Globalization.RegionInfo myRI2 = new System.Globalization.RegionInfo(new CultureInfo("en-my", false).LCID);
Console.Write(myRI2.CurrencySymbol);

For more information on setting the culture for specific to your country, please refer the code from this website:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.regioninfo.aspx

Alternatively, you can specify use string. Format (“{0:$#,##0.##}”,50000), you can replace the ‘$’ whaterver you like. however this is not a good practice.

How to customize community server 2007?

2008-03-15T22:26:00.004+08:00

Ever think of customize community server 2007? Yes, you can. However to teach you the whole thing will be long story, therefore keep thing simple. Just follow this guideline and try it yourself. Here the steps:

1. Download the SDK cs2007.1 from communityserver.org

2. Refer to short and tested step from doc.communityserver.org/wiki/page.aspx/399/how-to-create-new-themes/ (please follow the step from 1,2 and 3 only)

3. Install your cs2007.1 database

4. Compile and Run the SDK source code from VS 2005, note you have to do some setting in the property page such as running it from dynamic port rather than localhost ISS

5 .Copy the created theme from step 2 and paste the dir into the cs theme directory.

6. refresh and include the dir. Edit the pasted dir only.

7. try to edit the master.master such as remove the logo and run it and feel the different.

Good luck, i have tested it and it works!

good design determine programmer productivity that create reliable system

2008-03-02T09:00:00.007+08:00

An enterprise system is complex and it has to be able to handle day to day business processes and activities. The reliability of the system is so much dependent on how the system was designed and developed by the programmer. Programmer need to code well and able to create a system with the most reliable code. However, in practical to be able to achieve a highly reliable system is very costly to the organization. The reason is because a lot of testing need to be done to ensure that every source code is validated. Microsoft particuallary has been trying to improve the reliability of Windows by patches and patches after the final release. Why need to do in that way? Why not to produce a system which is 100% free of bugs? The answer of this question is too simple to say that it is very time consuming and costly to examine every possiblility of the failure in the system. We have no choice but keep complaining about the reliability of the system and luckly there are software developers who are keeps fixing it. This is how the software industry works. If some one were to change it, it is the last breakthrough of information technology.

To start to design a stable and reliable system, 3 things need to keep in mind at first. 3 rules: guidelines need to be followed, always keep things simple and last but not lease always keeps design a good database structure by having 3rd NF.

Guidelines are the findings and experinces of the system designer in which makes the best to design the system. It also covers the rules that draw the requirements. Guidelines are important because the things to be followed and the things to be avoided during the system development cycle, guideline are very depending on each organization, therefore you set your own rules.

KISS, keep it simple, the secret that always work in every situation in our life. Keep it simple does not means to ignore requirements but to avoid doing things in a hard way. We need to be smart in finding alternative which is elegant and simple enough to our self to accomplish thing. For example, i can save time by having alble to find 5Min's solution using Google. Smart isn't it?

Database design is very very important. We hardly see an enterprise system without using database. A large system particularly are very used to having a database server to serve everyday data intensive client. Moreover, an efficient and high performance database system is critical to the success of the system as a whole. Therefore database design is extremely critical to determine the reliability of the system and the productivity of the programmers. Why? The reasons are, programmer need to code less and perhaps it is easier to code if the database design is in properly designed. I once experience to do develop a system in which the database design is not in the proper way. In this case i had to write additional code which is not necessary to make it work and i had to spend much my time to check the data to ensure it was consistent across the system. Why we need to check by us since a relational database system is so good in enforcing constrain in every database manipulation that keep data integrity. Therefore a good database design must have this 3 things, 3rd NF, one primary key for each table and have relational constrain.

A lot of problem will happen during the system development if the initial system design is not good enough. The worst thing is that the database design is in bad shape, i wonder how many debugging time has been wasted during the system development.

check if url is valid and accessible .NET

2008-02-15T19:22:00.005+08:00

This is a common problem for most of ASP.NET developer when we try to check if the url is valid or not. Here is a tip for you. :)

public static bool IsValidUrl(string url)
{
HttpWebRequest httpReq =
(HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
httpReq.AllowAutoRedirect =
false;
httpReq.Method = "HEAD";
httpReq.KeepAlive =
false;
httpReq.Timeout = 2000;
HttpWebResponse httpRes;
bool exists =
false;
try
{
httpRes = (HttpWebResponse)httpReq.GetResponse();
if
(httpRes.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
{
exists =
true;
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
}
return exists;
}

Google map program using .net

2008-02-10T02:24:00.004+08:00

You can create a custom google map by using Google Maps Api which example found in http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/examples/

However, those example is written in java script and it is not so stright forward to be used in ASP.NET code.... Anyway, to work with java script code with ASP.NET keep these in mind

let txtLongitude is a control which can be used inside javascript, u can called the txtLongitude by
""

txtLatitude.ClientID is used because is require if you are using ASP.NET master pages.

confusing file path for web developer .net

2008-02-07T18:38:00.000+08:00

Are you one of the developer always confuse whith this kind of path e "games/alien.jpg" or "../games/alien.jpg" or "/games/alien.jpg" ? Even if you know the meaning, i am sure you still have problem of this because the path is constructed as it depends how the caller is located. Seem to be over complicated here. :)

I am one of the developer that alwasys confuse with file path that looks like <*img src=".../love/app/basic.jpg" /*>". i really do not like because it can be problematic especially if you are ASP.NET developer that uses master pages across the pages.

if you are one of those guy that always experince broken links, I have an elegant solution to this problem.

Given a virtual directory named site, which can be accessibled as http://localhost/site and you have a file which located at http://localhost/site/games/alien.jpg

to effectively locate the alien.jpg, you got to use this

ResolveUrl("~/games/alien.jpg")

In this way, you won't be confused how the file is located. ~ represents the parent virtual path.

Ok, if you wish to upload the file to the server using the ResolveUrl don't give you the real path... in this case, replace the ResolveUrl method to MapPath method.

e.g:

MapPath("~/games/alien.jpg"). The file will be uploaded to the location of '~'.

Got it?

Different between web application and windows application

2008-02-07T18:07:00.000+08:00

Obviously, by the name itself web application is built for web and can be viewed by internet browser. Whereas windows application is a program that runs under windows. People choose web application because web app can relatively easy to deloy and once deloy it is readily widely available to anywhere and anytime. The design itself is distrbuted and programmers do not need to worry so much about complicated deloyment consideration. Sometimes, programmers choose to write in windows application is because somethings cannot be possibly done by having web application. For example, extensive use of processing power such as graphic randering program, e.g 3D designer program. A special program that deals with hardware such as printer driver, have to be written in windows application. Usually "designer program" oftens built as windows application. Whereas business application that requires multi users such as inventory system is oftenly built as web application.

If you are unsure of which is the best choice to go with, please follow my guildline, -

first think of if the program can be easily built and deployed by having web application, if the answer meet these criteria, then go for web application.

Otherwise go for windows application. or perhaps a combination of web and windows which known as smart application which combinethe best of both.

As my own preference, i like web application because it is relatively easy to manage the communication between modules and because it support css which makes styling much easier and faster.

I had been building windows application by using the composite application block CAB... The framework is cool but deployment can be much hassle because you have to worry the security issues ( you do not want your files be hacked by the user because he got your files).

Last but not least, go for web if possible for business realated appplication.

Post me a comment if you are disaggree with me :)

Split camel casing using regex .NET

2008-02-04T11:10:00.000+08:00

ever wonder any better apporoch to convert "BeMyLover" to "Be My Lover"? Here the function in C#.

private string SplitCamelCasing(string input)
{
string output =
"";
return output =
System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(
input,
"([A-Z])",
"
$1",
System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.Compiled).Trim();
}

An easy way to manipulate database using Subsonic

2008-02-03T19:40:00.000+08:00

I had been using various tools to manipulate database. The only tool that i find very simple so far .net web development is subsonic. http://www.subsonicproject.com/.

Subsonic is really powerful to CRUD your database. SQL is not nessary and it is all object oriented. The best object realtional mapper for .net 2.0

Give a try :)

dropdownlist postback problem ASP.NET

2008-01-17T21:52:00.000+08:00

have you encounter that ASP.NET dropdownlist control have a problem of persistent the data in the items list after you had make a postback? The problem is actually you have disabled the EnableViewState. Therefore the control will not persist any data after an postback. To enable it back, just - EnableViewState="true".

This is a super tips, because you might disabled it, in this case turn it on!

Export table and data using SqlBulkCopy

2007-11-29T17:56:00.000+08:00

i have one database to be exported and i try to use the import and export features from the sqlserver 2005. However i enconter one problem which is the primary key of the enabled indentity insert is all mess up after the importing to my new database. I just found and tested a utility and it works quite well.

method to export

generate a sql script with having the sql schema
use this program simple sql bulk copy downloadable from http://projects.c3o.com/files/default.aspx

ref:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.sqlclient.sqlbulkcopy.aspx

What programming language is the best?

2007-10-14T22:54:00.000+08:00

Every programmer will ask this very common question What programming language is the best? C#? Java? C++? C? Perl? or ...??? In order to answer this question, you have to ask yourself what programming language you like most. Next, think about does the language powerful enough to be used in the type of application your are doing. Finally, some language is designed specifically and targeted to certain type of application. If the type of application you are doing match the language you are using, development productivity will improve and it is more easier to program. Likewise, you will get crazy in the middle of development if you choose the wrong language. For me, I want simple and powerfully high level language... I believe C# and it is my only choice.

Create a serch engine with linq

2007-08-14T00:10:00.000+08:00

I always amazed by how search engine works and it seem so wonderful that google has created the most amazing search engine to put infomation on our finger tips. Would you like to create a simple search engine? Here you can do it pretty easy with Linq.

The techniques needed in constructing search engine are regular expression, Linq, Generic, C#, sort and ranking algorithm.

Here is the code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using
System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using
System.Query;
namespace search
{
public class Search
{
private
List _SearchRelevance = new
List();
public List
SearchRelevence
{
get
{
return
_SearchRelevance;
}
}
private List _Results =
new List();
public List
Results
{
get
{
return
_Results;
}
}

public Search(string input, string[]
text)
{
for (int i = 0; i < text.Length; i++)
{
SearchRelevance
sr = new SearchRelevance(input,
text[i]);
sr.Calculate();
_SearchRelevance.Add(sr);
}
Sort();
}
private
void Sort()
{
var relevences =
from w in _SearchRelevance
orderby
w.RelevancePoint descending
select w;
foreach (SearchRelevance sri in
relevences)
{
_Results.Add(sri);
}
}

}
public class
SearchRelevance
{
public SearchRelevance(string input, string
text)
{
_OriginalText = text;
_UserInput = input;
}
public
override string ToString()
{
return _RelevancePoint.ToString() +" "+
_OriginalText ;
}
internal void Calculate()
{
string[] splitedinput
= UserInput.Split(new char[] { ' ' });
Dictionary
relevency = new Dictionary();
//initialize the relevency
dic.
for (int i = 0; i < splitedinput.Length;
i++)
{
relevency.Add(splitedinput[i], 0);
}
for (int i = 0; i <
splitedinput.Length; i++)
{
Regex reg = new Regex(splitedinput[i],
RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
if (reg.IsMatch(OriginalText))
{
int
point;
relevency.TryGetValue(splitedinput[i], out
point);
relevency.Remove(splitedinput[i]);
relevency.Add(splitedinput[i],
++point);
}
}
_Relevancy = relevency;
//sum the relevency
int
rpoint = 0;
foreach (KeyValuePair kv in
relevency)
{
rpoint += kv.Value;
}
_RelevancePoint =
rpoint;
}
private string _UserInput;
public string
UserInput
{
get
{
return _UserInput;
}
}
private string
_OriginalText;
public string OriginalText
{
get
{
return
_OriginalText;
}
}
private int _RelevancePoint;
public int
RelevancePoint
{
get
{
return _RelevancePoint;
}
}
private
Dictionary _Relevancy = new Dictionaryint>();
public Dictionary
Relevancy
{
get
{
return _Relevancy;
}
}
}
public class
Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string[] sb = new
string[4];
sb[0] = "Relevance cassida shell theory may be seen as an
attempt";
sb[1] = "registered by NSF (Class H1) cassida for use
where";
sb[2] = "Shell Cassida Silicone Fluid is";
sb[3] = "to work out in
detail one of Grice’s central claims";
string input = "nsf shell central h1
sillicone fluid";
Search sr = new Search(input, sb);
SearchRelevance[] res
= sr.Results.ToArray();
}
}
}

XML as data storage, query with Linq

2007-08-09T21:16:00.000+08:00

Most of the time data is stored as database but how about data stored as a file format? If data is stored as file format meaning that we have much more power to decide the storage however file as storage is not always the ideal situation if data is too complex to store and difficute to manage. Today we see relational database is so successfull because of the database management design. We use SQL to manipulate data and we are happy with the power and the flexibility that SQL could give.

However, there is a problem that storing data in database always seem to be bulky for small application. Imagine that, you are creating a subsystem as a service of a larger system, which has is own database implementation. Logically, it is not advisable that the sub system use it own database or share the data store with the larger system mainly because having a it own database is too bulky and has environment limitation. And, if data store is shared meaning that integration will be too costly and complicated.

The solution is to use XML as isolated data storage. We have to build services around the data and expose it as interface for larger system integration. Having using xml as data, the integration is much simpler and less impact on the overall larger system.

Most people i would say do not like to query XML data because of the complicated query and it is not SQL liked. However, now the situation has changed, you can query data having SQL liked by using linq to XML. Developer can use linq to query XML data. In the next discussion, I will show you how you can play around with this Linq to XML technique.

Frackyly, i do not like XML as data store until i found that Linq has so much to promise.

for more information on the linq technology, please visit
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa904594.aspx

Read XML data and bind to datagridview .NET

2007-08-09T17:30:00.000+08:00

if you want to bind xml data to your datagrid, you need do as below:

dataSet1.ReadXml("kwyProducts.xml");
dataGridView1.DataSource =
dataSet1;
dataGridView1.DataMember = "KWYProducts";

Notes: please specify your DataMember correctly else will throw you this error:

Child list for field KWYProduscts cannot be created.

How to restore a sql server database backup?

2007-07-25T09:58:00.000+08:00

I had backup a database of my SQL Server 2005, however it can't be restore due to the drive location issue, therefore here is the method to overcome this problem:

Use Master
RESTORE DATABASE DinnerNow FROM
DISK = 'C:\DinnerNow.bak' WITH MOVE
'DinnerNownew' TO
'F:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL
Server\MSSQL.4\MSSQL\Data\DinnerNownew.mdf', MOVE 'DinnerNownew_log' TO
'F:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL
Server\MSSQL.4\MSSQL\Data\DinnerNownew.ldf'
GO

How to enumerate Generic Dictionary .NET list

2007-07-25T09:42:00.000+08:00

At first i found that enumerating a .net Dictionary class seem to be difficult but later i found that there is a way of doing this for example:

//instantiate a dictionary list
Dictionary _PointDic = new
Dictionary();
public Dictionary
PointDic
{
get { return _PointDic; }
set { _PointDic = value; }
}
//add value to named key
public void AddPoints(int point, string
ruleName)
{
int temp = 0;
if (!_PointDic.TryGetValue(ruleName, out
temp))
{
_PointDic.Add(ruleName,
point);
}
else
{
_PointDic.Remove(ruleName);
_PointDic.Add(ruleName,
point);
}
}
//sum up the values in the dictionary list
public int
CalculatePoints()
{
int totalpoints = 0;
foreach
(KeyValuePair s in _PointDic)
{
totalpoints +=
(int)s.Value;
}
return totalpoints;
}

ConfigurationManager .Net

2007-07-16T00:02:00.000+08:00

How you read your custom setting in your application configuration file.

//Read settings
public static string ReadConfig(string key)
{
return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.GetValues(key)[0];
}

//Update Settings & get immediate changes
public static void SetConfig(string key, string value)
{
Configuration con = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None);
con.AppSettings.Settings[key].Value = value;
con.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Full);
ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("appSettings");
}

Create a distributable workflow enabled smart client

2007-06-14T11:27:00.000+08:00

We want to develop a windows application with workflow enabled. The easiest and fastest way is to use Microsoft Workflow Foundation which give you a complete API for designing any workflow application that you can think of.

We wanted to develop a windows application which has to be distributed to multiple computers and having multiple users. Here we have one challenge, we need to host the Workflow. The most simple implementation is to host workflow in a dedicated server where many clients can access to it. Next we have to expose the workflow as webservice, this is important because workflow as webservice can give you the maximum flexibility in connectivity and interoperability. For example, connect a mobile device that runs java application. Sound interesting?

I will post the tutorial on building your first smart client workflow enabled application here for your reference.

Short hand using if else for ADO.NET

2007-06-06T13:47:00.000+08:00

SqlCeCommand command = new SqlCeCommand(queryString, connection);
command.Connection.Open();
ccommand.Parameters.Add("@AddressID", (object)AddressID?? DBNull.Value );

SQL Compact return new insertion identity

2007-06-06T13:44:00.000+08:00

Try this code it will help.

public Int64 AddCustomer(string LastName, string FirstName, int?
AddressID, string MembershipUsername, string PhoneNumber, string
MobilePhoneNumber)
{
SQLCeHelper sqlce = new
SQLCeHelper(Properties.Settings.Default.CarServ3DB4ConnectionString);
string
queryString =
"INSERT INTO Customer" +
"(LastName, FirstName, AddressID,
MembershipUsername, PhoneNumber, MobilePhoneNumber)" +
"VALUES
(@LastName,@FirstName,@AddressID,@MembershipUsername,@PhoneNumber,@MobilePhoneNumber)";
Int64
newIdentity = 0;
using (SqlCeConnection connection = new
SqlCeConnection(
Properties.Settings.Default.CarServ3DB4ConnectionString))
{
SqlCeCommand
command = new SqlCeCommand(queryString,
connection);
command.Connection.Open();
command.Parameters.Add("@LastName",
LastName);
command.Parameters.Add("@FirstName",
FirstName);
command.Parameters.Add("@AddressID", (object)AddressID??
DBNull.Value );
command.Parameters.Add("@MembershipUsername",
MembershipUsername);
command.Parameters.Add("@PhoneNumber",
PhoneNumber);
command.Parameters.Add("@MobilePhoneNumber",
MobilePhoneNumber);
command.ExecuteNonQuery();
SqlCeCommand command1 = new
SqlCeCommand("select @@identity ", connection);
newIdentity =
Convert.ToInt32(command1.ExecuteScalar());
}
return
newIdentity;
}

FileNotFoundException was unhandled

2007-05-31T09:44:00.000+08:00

Could not load file or assembly 'System.Data.SqlServerCe, Version=9.0.242.0,
Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91' or one of its dependencies.
The system cannot find the file specified.

You might encountered this error when the System.Data.SqlServerCe version has redirected to another newer version due Visual Studio 2005 generated code on your application config file.

To solve this problem, you have to delete something like below in you app.config file.

xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">

name="System.Data.SqlServerCe" publicKeyToken="89845DCD8080CC91"
culture="neutral"/>
newVersion="9.0.242.0"/>

hope this helps

You are trying to access an older version of a SQL Server Compact Edition database. If this is a SQL Server CE 1.0 or 2.0 database, run upgrade.exe.

2007-05-26T09:29:00.000+08:00

This happens when your .sdf database version changed and perhaps corrupted. It might due to merge replication of using SQL Server 2005. Therefore the only solution is to repair it.

To repair it you must use the
System.Data.SqlServerCe.SqlCeEngine class, version 9.0.242.0 or 3.5.0.0

Here is the example of the implementation.

File.Copy(@"F:\northwind.sdf",@"F:\northwind.sdf.temp");
File.Delete(@"F:\northwind.sdf");
SqlCeEngine
engine = new SqlCeEngine(@"Data Source
=F:northwind.sdf.temp");
engine.Compact(@"Data
Source=F:\northwind.sdf");
File.Delete(@"F:\northwind.sdf.temp");

A repaired northwind.sdf is produced and now you should not be getting this error again. Any other alternative? Please let me know. :)

Before trying to solve, think first

2007-05-25T23:14:00.000+08:00

most of us solve problem as straight away try to do it without thinking or planning when given a problem. This often lead to slow productivity because the method used is not effective enough to solve the a given problem. Perhaps there is a better way solving the problem, you might not know it. Therefore just keep these checklists in mind before starting any problem solving:

Do your research and gather as much information as you can.
Any question, don't wait... ask Google.
Give yourself various alternative solutions.
Be creative and don't afraid to break the rules.

If you could follow all these mention above, you could be a better problem solver.

software user interface design.

2007-05-23T22:16:00.000+08:00

User interface is very important to improve the usability of the software. Software application failed to meet user expectations and requirements are often due to the lack of proper UI design. Simple UI often impress user whereas complex UI often frighten user away. When design UI, the first thing have to come to every developer mind; always design in user perspective.

A great UI must always have these criteria:

simple and does the job right.
good navigation and proper UI arrangement
easy accessible functions and customized menu for the user
fast and responsive UI

please keep in mind that UI design is the first user impression of the software.

Keep application performance design in first place.

2007-04-05T00:43:00.000+08:00

Most often when we write a piece of software we often lack of consideration thanking about designing a fast loading program and this is always true if we designed a small program. Actually there are various of ways to improve the performance of program, for example keep the program initialization as light weight as possible, be careful when we allocate memory, and always think of threaded programming design. Sometimes, we feel demotivated because of the expensive cost involve in having putting performance design in the first place, however, investment will be well worth if the customer don't feel your software is slow and underperformed in average.

Assume that we design a small program called Sales Reporting to be used in an organization. Since the program has just only a few modules, we ignore the performance design. Over the time, we might be adding some functionality, hence the complexity of the program increase. Maintainability of the program also an issue if the program is not well designed. One day, you are requested to improve the performance of the program because users are keep complaining that the slow loading program keep them not be patient anymore. Users are fed up and their work is always distracted. The company are not going to invest to redesigned the program because over the year many time and money was spent in maintaining the program. The program is reliable and the problem is just lack of performance. You as a software consultant is hired to perform this task, what is the first thing you would do?

You might be run test the program at the first place to see which area need to be improved. You had identify that some areas need to be redesigned for significant performance gain. You had just planned the initial strategy. Secondly, you are looking to the source code, you are over surprise that most part of the code could be very difficult to be modify for performance gain because the original designer do not keep the best practise in coding hence lead to performance issue. Another concern is that the application is extremely tedious to convert to threaded application because initially the program is very difficult to maintain and the structure the application is not well understood by anyone.

You see, the scenario above has demonstrated that application tend to be extremely difficult to gain performance when the application aged. To solve this problem we must keep performance design in the first place during application planning and design phase.

Format default date in SQL Server 2005

2007-04-04T09:18:00.000+08:00

Normally the default date for sql server is shown as 1/1/2007 12:00:00, however i feel the format of the date is too long and it would be better to be formatted as 1 Jan 2007. In order to create this effect, here the tip.

CONVERT(CHAR(11), getdate(), 106) AS Date

Framework 3.5 linq rocks inside .NET 2.0

2007-03-08T14:42:00.000+08:00

Today i have tested the Visual Studio Orcas CTP and I found the linq feature is really cool. I did some testing whereby i tried to create a class which uses some linq features. I compiled it with the framework 3.5 and finally i tried to reference it in my Visual Studio 2005. Guess what i managed to call the assembly compiled in framework 3.5 inside my framework 2.0 project. Therefore, this concluded that i could create my signed business logic classes using linq.

Great job!

SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition - Internal Error: Invalid reconciler parameter

2007-03-01T13:48:00.000+08:00

If you are experiencing this error "Internal Error: Invalid reconciler parameter" when you are doing merge replication or sync stuffs, don't worry because the error is due to the directory path is too long to be supported in .NET, therefore you need to copy your solution folder and paste it to C:\ for instance so that the directory path could be recognized by .NET.

For more detail explanation, please go to
http://pluralsight.com/blogs/jimw/archive/2006/06/18/28427.aspx

SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition Tutorial

2007-03-01T13:38:00.000+08:00

Developing mobile application never been so easier with Visual Studio 2005. The SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition also comes with free. With a lot of support, there is no reason that I want to get started with my own written mobile application. To learn more about the SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition, please visit the http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/bb219480.aspx to quickly get started the tutorials to experience the most advance features.

N Computing vs Personal Computing - my point of view

2007-03-01T01:54:00.000+08:00

My company recently have a plan to improve existing IT infrastructure by replacing those old PCs so that our staffs could be happier and more productive. However, my manager was asking me to give him some advice and recommendation of it and he also did suggest me about the N Computing solution (http://www.ncomputing.com/). I was very impress with the technology because it could save us tons of money off from buying "duplicated" hardware and software licences.

After i had done my researches and I found that the device is not as cheap as i thought. In the US it is sold at USD50 per device however in Malaysia, it is sold at USD162. NComputing in Malaysia pricing is so ridiculous and unreasonable since today computing is so cheap that i could built a PC with a 2.8GHz processor, motherboard V+L+S, 512 RAM, DVDRW drive and casing (a PC really need a protection), which cost me at USD151 only. That is US10 cheaper and I could get a real computer rather that just a simple station box. I could upgrade my PC over time with more functionality but I have limited or no upgradable ability with the NComputing station box.

Are you wondering how i could built the PC so cheap? The reason is the PC has no hard disk inside because i want to compare between "Apple X" and "Apple Y". The concept of using N computing is to connect the station box (client) with the host (server) in multi-user session scenario using a network connection. However it also can be done by a PC without a hard disk since I could use a open source Linux OS distribution such as KNOPPIX (http://www.knopper.com/) to be loaded by just a CD or DVD!. Inside the distribution DVD, it comes with plenty of useful software including Open Office 2.1 and a FireFox Internet browser. In this case I could remote access to my Windows Server 2003 host which supports multi-concurrent user via the Internet browser. Therefore, I have no problem running Windows application such as Ms Office 2007.

As my conclusion, I would consider the station box if it is less than US50 else it should be an obsolete technology if the cost of making it is too high. Since today computing is so cheap, in which an unused CPU resources could be used as distributed computing purposes but not the station box.

Extreme Programming Part 1 - Introduction

2007-02-28T08:48:00.000+08:00

Extreme programming or XP is a software development methodology that aim to improve software development productivity, reduce risk and cost. The main focus is to develop software in incrementally, rapid prototyping and communicate frequently that lead to accept requirement changes frequently ( most programmers hate it) and However XP doesn't work for all scenario specially for mission critical system and large system because those system normally needs highly formal specification whereas XP programming is just the opposite.

The main challenge of XP is real fun because you need to do everything yourself and you will deal with customers frequently and communicate with your peers frequently. You got to work out with a prototype very fast an usually you need a code generator to generate the whole application for you. Eg. Iron Speed http://www.ironspeed.com/ does the job. You got to test it and evaluate it for whatever reason to meet the requirements. XP is great if you have a small team around 2-6 people.

To be continued...

Concurrent Remote Desktop Sessions in Windows XP SP2

2007-02-27T16:40:00.000+08:00

Since Windows XP does not allow multiple concurrent access at the same time using the remote desktop server, however here the link to workaround with.

As for me i applied the terminal server patch (Please follow the link to download the patch below) to the Windows XP pro and i works after restarted. However you need to do one extra step in order you can remote the client user.

Here the extra step

Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Local User and Groups > right click the selected user (create a new user if you want) > properties > Member Of > Add > Advance > Find now > Choose Remote Desktop User > Click Apply and finally OK.

You migh need to change to different port by editing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber

Now you have successfully turn your Windows XP pro into a terminal server which could support multi concurrent user using Remote Desktop.

Cheers!

http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop

http://www.kood.org/terminal-server-patch/ (Recommended)

http://riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/index.php/2006/04/24/windows-xp-multiuser-remote-desktop/

http://www.golod.com/2005/10/enabling-multiple-remote-desktop-sessions-in-windows-xp-professional-and-media-center-edition-2005/

Get ready with your ASP.NET app using ADAM Membership using ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider Class

2007-02-26T09:58:00.000+08:00

If you want to manage storage of membership information for an ASP.NET application in Active Directory and Active Directory Application Mode servers, you need to do these thing:

Install ADAM. Download ADAM from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9688F8B9-1034-4EF6-A3E5-2A2A57B5C8E4&displaylang=en
Install into your Windows Server 2003 (recommended).
After the installation you need to follow this tutorial presented here. [Download Pdf]
You need to configure web.config, please follow the http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.security.activedirectorymembershipprovider(VS.80).aspx
That's it and you are ready to test drive!

Have you encountered this error before?

Unable to establish secure connection with the server using SSL

The reason is because you did not follow my tutorial. :)

Linq to SQL get started snippet example

2007-02-26T00:47:00.000+08:00

Well, here the problem:

Given that you have 2 table in many to many relationship, how create using Linq?

First of all you need to normalize it to 1 to many format. Since you are using Linq, it is safer that each and every table has 1 identity autonumbered column to prevent any CRUD failures (Hope this will be fixed soon).

Now you got 3 tables, since you are dealing with > 1 table therefore you're recommended to create a transaction to perform any CRUD.

Here are the code snippet

using (System.Transactions.TransactionScope scope = new
System.Transactions.TransactionScope())
{
try
{
//initialize it and
the connection created
pfData = new PersonalFinanceDataContext();

//Create spending type, the first table
SpendingType
spendingType = new SpendingType();
spendingType.Name = accountName;

//Create Account, the second table
Account accPayable = new
Account();
accPayable.AccountName = accountName;

//Map them together, by a mapper table
SpendingAccount
spendingAccount = new SpendingAccount();
spendingAccount.Account =
accPayable;
spendingAccount.SpendingType = spendingType;

//remember to add into database context else everything will be
lost!
pfData.SpendingAccounts.Add(spendingAccount);

//Save it
pfData.SubmitChanges();

//commit it, everything is successfully done!
scope.Complete();
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
throw "Bad linq" + ex;
}
}

hope you have some basic idea of how easy that linq to sql could do for you.

ASP.NET skinning

2007-02-25T19:23:00.000+08:00

I found this website really helps in skinning ASP.NET application. http://www.dotnettreats.com/SampleThemes/

Carso Virtual University Proposal

2007-02-25T17:18:00.000+08:00

These are the proposed features of this project and I would invite you who are interested in realizing the Open Virtual University Program.

Core features:

Students and tutor membership management
Class scheduling, course booking and students & tutors' timetable management.
Students performance ranking and enrollment statistics.
Automated e-exam creation by selecting question from questions' bank.
Custom personal web pages for students and tutors.
Course materials management. File sharing, upload and download facilities.
Course enrollment system.
Voting and suggestion system.

Optional features.

Thesis plagiarism detection.
Automated timetable scheduling system.
Subject's advisor expert

All these features would be implemented in Dotnetnuke module. Any other web framework such as using community server 2.1 is under consideration. Custom ASP.NET framework maybe suggested.

I need 2 web designers specializing in skinning ASP.NET user interface. 5 software developers, 1 database designer. i will be your project manager i this Carso's VU project.

Please drop me a line if you wish to participate.

Great codeproject articles for those interested in artificial intelligent

2007-02-25T16:36:00.000+08:00

Today i came across this link http://www.codeproject.com/script/Articles/list_articles.asp?userid=1181072 and i found that the author Andrew Kirillov is wonderful in his those written articles. I have been a fan of artificial intelligent science since i was in high school. I would like to invite you guys 2-5 to work along with me a project called car parking system which is useful for finding empty car parking spaces. Besides, the system also suggest the shortest path and the most minimum time to obtain car parking space. The project would be implemented in Windows Mobile 5.0 and ASP.NET web application. Those who are interested please write some comment on this post.

How to enable Secure Soket Layer SSL in IIS 5.0/6.0 Server using VeriSign?

2007-02-23T18:11:00.000+08:00

If you are a web developer or web administrator, you often ask this common question. How to enable Secure Soket Layer SSL in IIS 5.0/6.0 Server using VeriSign's certificates? What is SSL? Simply we can say that SSL is a security technology that secure the communication between the sender and the receiver by protecting the data with strong encrytion that hopefully no body could read the encypted data.

to enable the SSL in your IIS 5.0/6.0, you must follow these 10 steps shown below, no less and no more.

Step 1:

Click "Server Certificates" under IIS > Directory Security Tab

Step 2:

Please look at the screen which self explained.

Step 3:

Click Next, Next until you see this

Step 4:
Step 5:

Step 6:

After you have finished, you have to go to http://www.verisign.com/ to create your SSL certificate. Verisign 's SSL certificate is not FOC, however you could obtain a free 14 days trial for testing purposes. Please follow the instructions provided by verisign, you have to sign up as member before you could create your SSL certificate.

Step 7:

Assume that you are half way setup your SSL cert, you need to upload the certreg.txt which you just created in your IIS. Verisign will read your certreg.txt and confirm the information to you. After all, Verisign will send you an e-mail to you.

Step 8:

After you have received your e-mail, you will find that there is a funny string which look something like Ky456hJKLsM... printed at the end of your e-mail. Please copy and paste to a notepad and save it as vericert.cer. You will need this later.

Step 9:

You will see this screen and just click next.

Step 10:

Browse the vericert.cer which you had created in step 8:

Click next and you are done!

You can test drive your IIS server by typing https://localhost/ in your browser and please double click the security yellow color lock icon to preview the certificate information.

Send e-mail by c# coding

2007-02-13T18:20:00.000+08:00

So simple as this:

using System.Net.Mail;

MailMessage msgMail = new MailMessage("spammer@haqckers.net","carso@cheeweng.com","Your subject","your message");
SmtpClient smtpC = new SmtpClient("localhost");
smtpC.Send(msgMail);

but you need to set your IIS smtp mail correctly. Check out below

http://codebetter.com/blogs/peter.van.ooijen/archive/2006/04/05/142331.aspx

How to get my motherboard serial number using C#?

2007-02-13T17:34:00.000+08:00

Sometimes we might want to identity the unique user for some purposes by knowing the machine identity they are using. Software licensing for instance, we could use his machine processor Id or motherboard id to uniquely identify them.

So here are the tricks:

http://carsolife.blogspot.com/2007/02/how-to-get-my-motherboard-serial-number.html

Are you interested in taking part in open virtual university program?

2007-02-13T01:44:00.000+08:00

This virtual university project had started about a year and the project is written in ASP.NET C#. We want to take one step further to port this whole project to dotnetnuke's modules. If you are interested in joining this program, please go to this link for more infomation.

http://babi.myftp.org/bbs/blogs/artifician/archive/2007/02/13/carso-s-open-virtual-university.aspx

EnableSessionState, ASP.NET most common error

2007-02-13T00:26:00.000+08:00

Session state can only be used when enableSessionState is set to true, either in a configuration file or in the Page directive. Please also make sure that System.Web.SessionStateModule or a custom session state module is included in the <*configuration*>*\**\*<*httpModules*> section in the application configuration.

When you'll encounter this kind of error? This occur when u are using state in your ASP.NET pages. For instance, you might be using

Session["Username"] = "Carso Owen"; //in your c# code

The solution is you need to do these 3 things in your ASP.NET web.config:

1. locate under the <*system.web*> <*sessionState mode = "InProc"/*> ... <*/system.web*>

2. modify the <*httpModules*><*add name="session" type="System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule"/*>

3. modify <*pages enableSessionState="true" */>

P/s : plz ignore the those * in the above.

Before you start your software project, what's the first thing you do?

2007-02-11T19:07:00.000+08:00

Before you start your software project, what's the first thing you do? For me i will backup my project first before continuing. Why, simply because i could undo it if something goes wrong, at least i could save my preciuos time. Let say, you are hadling a project A and you have spend the first 2 hours doing something wonderful, later on you did something funny and your whole project corrupted. fortunetly after spending 20minutes to find the the cause of the problems, you got the solution and then you spend another 30minutes to fix it, complile it and test it. You almost got there just a few step to fully recover it and it takes another 30 minutes for through testing. Finally you just got to recover the whole thing. In this senario how much time you have spend to recover it? it is almost 1 and a half hour doing something which is not productive. imagine that if you had "rar" (backup) the project at the first place and later you recover it via unrar it. how long does "unrar" takes? 2minutes vs 90minutes. Got it?

Let me show you the simple and yet effective way of backup your software project.

Let say your project is save under ProjectA, now you pretty sure that ProjectA iteration task is completed and you wish to backup it. So just rar it to ProjectA_V1.rar, well this is your first version of backup. You continue again your development iteration, after each successful task is done you rar it again, and now you rar it as ProjectA_V2 and so on and so forth.

When you encountered a corruption on your project and now you wish to recover it, therefore you look for the lastest .rar that you have backup.

One interesting question, why rar it? rar it could save your disk space but this is not the main reason. The only reason is because you pretty sure that you do not accidently modify the file inside the folder in case you did not rar it.

A personal accounting needed is to keep track your money

2007-02-11T02:54:00.000+08:00

I have a great and yet simple proposal to create a website to manage our personal accounting because i found that it is too tedious to enter my spending records in excel file. What is your opinion? I need a program that could validate data entries, tracking my spending and show some useful information regarding my spending habits. It must be web ready of course so that you all can be able to take advantage of it. Btw, it must be able to generate a report of account transactions at the end of the month. Any suggestion of my idea, please comment it.

FYI, I would like to invite you to have a preview of this project which is still in pre-release stage.
http://babi.myftp.org/bbs/PersonalSpending/ ( Beta 1 release)

My ASP.NET pages corrupted when i changed my database structure.

2007-02-10T14:16:00.000+08:00

We often heard about N-tier designs in software development and the reason of having this design is because we want to achieve the highest degree of software scalability. This comes with a price which means more development time has to be invested. Sometimes, because of budget and time constrains, we have to sacrifice in some way to trade of to productivity. Visual Studio 2005 has a very nice features which is known as table adapter and dataset that actually helps developers to gain significant productivity in data binding over user interface (UI) design. You will be amazed that only a few lines of code or without any coding, you could bind data from your database's table to your UI's control. This also means that, any changes in your database structure, it will actually corrupts or malfunctions your UI.

In my own experince, i was writting an ASP.NET application which uses SQL Server 2005 & Visual Studio 2005. Later, i discovered that i needed to update my database structure because i wanted to add some extra functionalities, so i need to add and delete a few database (db) tables, renaming some of my existing db's tables. Some changes had significant impact on my application while some had not. Therefore i needed to take this into consideration as well. After i had made the changes, I found that my data access logic layer seem to be useless because data access code actually maps back to the database structure, therefore it was no suprise. Luckly, my web application is 3-Tiers design which allows me to replace it with a new code generated data access layer (DAL). This is the most simplest part. Now it comes for modifying the business logic layer (BLL), because this layer actually calls your DAL, therefore changes need to be performed , you can't throw away your BLL and replaced it, you just need to spend your time modifying the calling object to your database.

Notes, renaming your tables and column names or deleting tables have the most
significant impact on yur BLL, on the other hand, adding new columns or tables
are not. (it depends how smart your ORM generator) .

After i'd made the changes and to make sure my BLL talks well with my DAL, then I need to make sure my UI calls my BLL well. Do i need to make changes to my UI code to make sure it talks well with my BLL? The answer is yes and no. if you expose your BLL as services interface then no changes nessary to your UI code, The answer is no and assuming that you want to preserve your previous functionality. If you do not have interface class, method overloading and constructor overloading presented in your BLL design, then the answer is yes and most problably that you need to make some changes to reflex your BLL :)

Finally, what if i am using this VS table adapter and dataset to bind data? The best answer is you have to check and make sure they are actually maps to your database's tables correctly, otherwise you need to regenerate or redesign your databinding again. However, this modification is not tredius and time consuming as you might think.

The question is how to eliminate these problems of code changes when database structure is being modified? In my personal opinion, i don't think we have the economically way to eliminate these problems. What we really care is try to make your UI design as simple as possible by abstracting the object calling either business layer or database layer. By this means, you are pretty save when disaster comes, you could easily solve it because you just made it simple.

.NET deployment, i am stuck

2007-02-08T19:58:00.000+08:00

Today i was nearly mad when i tried to deploy a CAB module. Initially, i need to deploy all the 10 modules however one of the module nearly make me crazy the whole day. What had happened was the module which I was deploying, could be installed successfully, however it was causing my application not to be loaded. I tried to figure out the causes of the problem and i found that during installation, some of my assemblies are replaced and therefore my application couldn't linked. Therefore i tried to deploy only those assemblies which are needed manually ( by default VS.NET will auto take care of it). There came another problem, the problem was that when i tried to deploy a assembly, let say moduleA.dll, all those dependencies of moduleA.dll will be auto deployed together with the moduleA. This is not what I wanted because the reason behind are those dependencies that causes the failure. I had tried various ways and I nearly going crazy. Suddenly i thought of one idea, what if i copied the assembly into another directory, let say I placed my moduleA.dll on to my desktop, and in hope that VS.NET is not so intelligent enough to detect those dependencies .dlls of moduleA.dll. Yahoo0o... now i managed to deploy those assembly that i want.

The conclusion is, way is always there, just be a bit creative when finding solutions. :)

Hash code, what the hack of that?

2007-02-07T21:48:00.000+08:00

well u always heard of encryption and hashing in security context, if we have encryption to protect our data, then why we need to hash?

FYI, we use hash code for 2 most common things, which are

Verify data integrity, to make sure the the data is always original and the right data
Used to store password, not original password but hashed
password.

Verify data integrity (use keyed hash code for better security)

let say a person A wants to send a file via e-mail to person B. person B wants to ensure that the file in the e-mail has not been intercepted, therefore person B need to generate hash code of the file received by him (person B) and compare it with the hash code of the file generated which sent together with the original text by the person A. if both the hash codes are equal in comparison, then the file is original and had not been altered, otherwise the data had been corrupted or intercepted.

example of keyed hash code :

you can use HMACSHA1 or MACTripleDES, using HMACSHA1 has better flexibility since it can support any key size in bits and up to 160bits of hash code size.

HMACSHA1 haHMACSHA1 = new
HMACSHA1(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes("secretKey"));
byte[] hashedData =
haHMACSHA1.ComputeHash(Encoding.Default.GetBytes("My important
data."));
string hashedCode = BitConverter.ToString(hashedData);

since the sender and the receiver knows the "secretKey"; only the right "secretKey" can produce the right hash code comparing the hash code of the file from the sender, therefore transmitting file will be more secure to avoid someone intercepting the file in case the hacker had created a faked data with hash code of its faked data. In this way, you not only be able to ensure the data is unchanged during transmission and it also ensure you that the data integrity.

Used to store password

Do you know that hashed password is quite impossible to compute back to original password? How to derive this
4B-E1-ED-D7-38-8A-AF-D5-A4-BD-D0-30-41-A8-34-7E-A1-84-E1-79-87-E8-7A-AA-79-2F-6D-7B-71-BA-01-A7 back to original data? The fact it is nearly impossible with any advance algorithm. Hash code is one way cryptographic functions. Therefore, if your customer said that he has lost the password and would like to retrieve it, the solution is to create a new password for him. That's all.

In real world, security expert will suggests that storing hashed password instead of plain text password in their database for security reason; system uses the stored hash code to compare with the computed hash code of password by the user. First the reason is because, no one could know what the user real password in the database even the database administrator. Secondly, a small different in password will result significant different in hash code of password, therefore it will be very hard to guess the hash code pattern given the relationship between a list of hash codes.

example of hash code :

you can use MD5 (128bits), SHA1(160bits), SHA256(256bits)....SHA512(512bits) algorithms.

HashAlgorithm haSHA256 = HashAlgorithm.Create("SHA256");
byte[] password =
Encoding.Default.GetBytes("MyPasSWoRd");
string hashedPassword =
BitConverter.ToString(haSHA256.ComputeHash(password));

simple? Next i will discuss about applying encryption into your code.

How to start a command prompt by coding using C# .NET?

2007-02-07T17:34:00.000+08:00

Try this:

using System.Diagnostics;

ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo("sqlcmd", "calc");
Process proc
= Process.Start(psi);
proc.Start();
proc.Close();

Guess what program will show up?

Why toggling control?

2007-02-07T14:50:00.000+08:00

A good software need be simple and able to hide those complexity contains in the software. User interface (UI) design is extremely important to make sure your software look simple. One of the tips that i find very useful technique is 'toggling control' to be applied in your UI design. What does this means? We toggle control because we want to limit a user to access of some controls (mind his business). if fewer choices means fewer mistakes made by user. We can either disable or enable those controls ; or we can visible or invisible them.

Here is a good example:

Create a method so that it can be used again and again

public void ToggleControl(bool enableToggle)
{
if (enableToggle)
{
txtEmail.Enabled = true;
txtUsername.Enabled =
true;
}
else
{
txtEmail.Enabled = false;
txtUsername.Enabled = false;
}
}

so u can call this method as simple as ToggleControl(true) to enable the control otherwise ToggleControl(false) to disable it.

How to get the file from OpenFileDialog and copy the file in another directory?

2007-02-07T13:38:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, your boss might ask you to read a product pricing file and manipulate it such as extracting the infomation and format it accordingly and save it back to a text file. In this case, the code below show you how u can use the .NET win control using OpenFileDialog class to provide a standard windows' open file dialog for your user to select a file and use the file to be manipulated. Here is the example:

using System.IO;
private void CopyFile2DirA()
{

// Create an OpenFileDialog
to request a file to open.
OpenFileDialog openFile1 =
openFileDialog1;

//Open the file and extract the infomation into tempstr
string tempstr = "";
using
(FileStream fs = (FileStream)openFile1.OpenFile())
{
byte[] b = new
byte[fs.Length];
UTF8Encoding temp = new UTF8Encoding(true);
while
(fs.Read(b, 0, b.Length) > 0)
{
tempstr += temp.GetString(b);
}
fs.Close();
}

//update the extracted data
tempstr += tempstr + " here some modified data.";
//save the file inside your executing directory
DirectoryInfo dinfo =
new
DirectoryInfo(openFile1.FileName);
File.WriteAllText(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
+ "\\" + dinfo.Name,tempstr);
}
That's it, now check the newly created file.