DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by ercu

Microsoft Chart Controls to PDF with iTextSharp and ASP.NET MVC

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:22:18 GMT

If you are developing a business application using ASP.NET MVC, and need to produce some kind of dashboard-style reporting, the Chart Controls from Microsoft are a good place to start. Having a summary in some form of document, say a PDF is also a common requirement. This article introduces you to satisfying both needs.

Take an ASP.NET Application offline with HttpModules

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:30:04 GMT

Whenever you do maintenance work on a website it is advisable to show the visitors a nice message telling them politely to come back later, rather than a nasty error, or even worse: a big Yellow Screen of Death. Read how I found a solution similar to the app_offline.html approach using HttpModules and how I still allow administrators to access the website.

ASP.NET MVC StrongRoutes AppAir.Web Preview Release

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:15:05 GMT

Magic strings be gone! make your routes strongly typed today.

Analyzing AutoMapper performance

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:27:35 GMT

A great real world example of profiling a .net app or library

ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1 is released!

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:30:00 GMT

ASP.NET MVC 2 first preview is released to public now and you can download it from Microsoft download site. Here is short overview of technical requirements and main new features of ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1.

ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1 released!

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:15:04 GMT

Today, Phil Haack did a blog post on the release of ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 1! Get it while it's fresh :-) An updated roadmap is also available on CodePlex. Guess now is about time to start revising my ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Quickly book.

Combining Assemblies Using ILMerge

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:15:02 GMT

When creating solutions that include multiple projects, Visual Studio creates an assembly for each project. This can lead to libraries that are complicated to use, needing many references. Using ILMerge, the assemblies can be combined into a single file.

Remotely Enabling Remote Desktop from the Command Line

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:51:18 GMT

How to enable RDP for a remote machine via the command line.

My Dot Net Developer's tools list, and more.

Wed, 27 May 2009 02:00:01 GMT

I gave a brownbag presentation at my current client recently about the common tools (in addition to Visual Studio), that I use on a regular basis for working with .NET or web development in general. I also threw in some non-development tools that are a part of my day to day life and make things easier. Here's the complete list:

Kona 3: Learning Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

Fri, 15 May 2009 20:46:26 GMT

Holy cow! Another *DD - man I really must have an IV with that Alt.NET Punch just coursing like a train in my veins! I ask for your patience with this one - cause I think BDD is a really good tool to know - whether you use it or not - knowing the workings of it will allow you to have some intelligent conversation the next time you're in Austin :).

How Do You Deal With Exceptions?

Fri, 15 May 2009 02:01:09 GMT

A little post on my ideas about handling exceptions within applications. How do you handle them?

ASP.NET MVC Subdomain Routing

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:31:02 GMT

One of the propagated "great features" for ASP.NET MVC is the full control you have over the routing and url's of your webapplication. In order to demonstrate this, let's walk through a sample that specifically handles subdomain routing.

Free T4 Editor for your ASP.NET MVC T4 Templates available

Fri, 08 May 2009 23:01:06 GMT

Found on tangible blog, that the new tangible T4 Editor 1.4 FREE EDITION now includes full Intelli-Sense support for MVC Host and related namespaces used in ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM T4 Templates. In addition it provides a nice highlighting for ASP.NET and T4 Code. Seems like anyone can now edit MVC T4 Templates with full comfort without investing a penny. Awesome!

How to test your multi-threaded code (part 1 of 3)?

Wed, 06 May 2009 23:01:04 GMT

CHESS is the answer. At least this is what we have best right now.

jQuery UI DatePicker instead of AJAX Control Toolkit CalendarExtender

Thu, 07 May 2009 02:46:01 GMT

The reasons why I abandoned using the CalendarExtender and choose to use the jQuery UI DatePicker instead.

Practical .NET Unit Testing - Free paper released

Fri, 01 May 2009 05:46:02 GMT

A free unit testing paper that covers why you should write unit tests, the mechanics of unit testing, common testing strategies, designing for testability, and advanced testing techniques. It's an ongoing project, but it's complete enough to hopefully start getting early feedback and suggestions!

Learning the Adapter Pattern

Fri, 01 May 2009 06:31:02 GMT

Taking a look at how you can use the Adapter Design Pattern in your applications.

Implementing a simple genetic algorithm

Fri, 01 May 2009 17:01:02 GMT

In this blog post I'll give a quick introduction to what genetic algorithms are and what they can be used for. We'll implement a genetic algorithm that attempts to guess an RGB color by evolving upon a random set of initial guesses, until it at some point evolves into the correct RGB value.

Returning PDFs from an ASP.NET MVC action

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:36:57 GMT

This feature is based on a post from Bill Barry, "Using Spark to render PDFs," to the Spark discussion group. It's based on iTextSharp, a port of the iText Java PDF library. It seemed like such a useful twist on the view engine, and so applicable to web sites, that I integrated what Bill had done into the Spark project and added a PdfViewResult action result for the ASP.NET MVC library.

Tutorial - Logging of Exceptions ELMAH (Part 1) | IstoMesmo

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:09:16 GMT

In this article I will talk to you of an open source project that allows logging of unexpected exceptions in Web applications in a simple, practical and efficient. The project ELMAH (Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET) appeared in 2004 as a project in the MSDN to demonstrate the use of HTTP Handlers and Modules.

How to handle non-English characters in ASP.NET MVC routes

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:04:07 GMT

A simple but useful trick to overcome built-in decode functionality in ActionLink in order to show non-English parameters as a part of a URL in ASP.NET MVC.

How-To use Domain specific languages to generate Code in Visual Studio

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:50:14 GMT

This interesting video shows how to generate Code from UML-style Diagrams within Visual Studio by using the build-in T4 Engine.

Handy web.config snippet for sending email in a development environmen

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:46:36 GMT

Hi there, A really handy thing I can use in my web.config while developing is something a collegue of mine pointed me to, and was already mentionded here by Donn Felker: Sending Email in a Development Environment without an SMTP Server <system.net>  <mailSettings> <smtp deliveryMethod='SpecifiedPickupDirectory'> <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\tmp" /> </smtp> </mailSettings> </system.net> This is very usable to test mail messages even when you don't have an SMTP server available. Hope this is usefull! gr, Robbert

Getting your Func<T> along with your Action<T> on

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:31:02 GMT

Taking a look at how you can utilize Func<T> along with your Action<T> to replace the usage of typed delegates in your application

How to Create A JQuery Plugin

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:01:45 GMT

A small tutorial about creating JQuery Plugins