A day in the life of...

Following on from my previous post about using(Tricks) here is an example which makes writing test cases easier rather than just for making your code nicely formatted. Take a look at the following test which ensures Article.Publish sets the PublishedDate correctly: [TestMethod] public void PublishedDateIsSet() {   //Create the EcoSpace, set its PMapper to a memory mapper   var ecoSpace = TestHelper.EcoSpace.Create();   //Creat an article   var article = new Article(ecoSpace);   //Create our Rhino Mocks repository   var mocks = new MockRepository();   //Mock the date/time to give us a predictable value   var mockDateTimeService = mocks.StrictMock<IDateTimeService>();   ecoSpace.RegisterEcoService(typeof(IDateTimeService), mockDateTimeService);   //Get a date/time to return from the mock DateTimeService   var now = DateTime.Now;   using (mocks.Record())  ...

Not so long ago I posted a solution to having a single-instance application. Rather than just preventing secondary instances from running the requirement was to have the 2nd instance pass its runtime parameters onto the 1st instance so that it can process them. My solution used remoting on the local machine. This appeared to work very well until recently when I needed an OpenFileDialog. Attempting to show the dialog resulted in an error about COM thread apartments. So, it wasn't THE solution. After a bit of research I decided to use named pipes instead. This meant I had to upgrade my app from .NET 2 to 3.5, but I think it is worth it. To implement the feature in an app you need to do 2 things. First you need to realize the interface ISingleInstanceApplicationMainForm on your app's main form in order to accept command line arguments from any subsequently started instances. Next you need to change your Program.Main method like so: [STAThread] static void Main(string[] a...

I've been writing a data importer which takes a specific data input format and outputs XML, this XML is then imported within my application. What annoyed me was the way in which the source code was formatted.... writer.WriteStartElement("data"); writer.WriteAttributeString("1", "1"); writer.WriteAttributeString("2", "2"); writer.WriteAttributeString("3", "3"); writer.WriteStartElement("systemData"); writer.WriteAttributeString("a", "a"); writer.WriteAttributeString("b", "b"); writer.WriteEndElement();//systemData writer.WriteEndElement();//data It just didn't look nice. I thought about splitting it into separate methods, but most of the time this would have been overkill as the methods would have been very short. Instead I wrote an extension method on XmlWriter: public static class XmlWriterHelper {   public static IDisposable StartElement(this X...

Whenever I generate OCL queries in code I find myself having to escape user input in order to avoid making the query invalid, or allowing malicious input. I've decided instead to use the ECO equivalent of parameterised queries (variables in ECO) and here is the result. public static string CreateParameterisedQuery(   this IEcoServiceProvider serviceProvider,   string query,   out IModifiableVariableList vars,   params object[] args) {   vars = serviceProvider.GetEcoService<IVariableFactoryService>().CreateVariableList();   for (int varIndex = 0; varIndex < args.Length; varIndex++)   {     string variableName = "autoVar_" + varIndex.ToString();     query = query.Replace("{" + varIndex.ToString() + "}", variableName);     vars.AddConstant(variableName, args[varIndex]);   }   return query; } To use thi...

I wanted to know how to authenticate users in a SilverLight app using their Windows login info. 01: Set the authentication mode to Windows and <deny users="?"/> in <system.web> within web.config 02: Move the silverlight control to Default.aspx and set that as your start page 03: Add the following Page_Load code protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { IPrincipal p = HttpContext.Current.User; if (p == null) throw new SecurityException("No current user"); if (!(p is WindowsPrincipal)) throw new SecurityException("Not a windows user"); if (!p.Identity.IsAuthenticated) throw new SecurityException("Not authenticated"); Xaml1.InitParameters = string.Format("user={0},session={1}", p.Identity.Name, Session.SessionID); } 04: In app.xaml.cs you can now read the InitParameters using e.InitParameters in the Application_Startup method.

My computer was recently running out of disk space. I couldn't believe it, I have 175GB on my partition, how could I fill it so quickly? I was considering buying a 500GB external drive to store my home videos etc on (which is where I assumed all the space was being taken) and earlier today I nearly went out and bought one too! I just decided to check where all that space was being taken up. Here are the folders on C and their sizes in GB apps 2.76 data 40.7 msocache 0.7 otherdata 0.8 program files 9.16 program data 0.9 users 1.64 windows 13.8 That's a total of 70.46GB, but Windows was reporting 173GB in use! I ran scan disk etc, no luck! Where was all the space being used? The answer was System Restore! After reading this article I realised my restore data was using 90GB of data! What a waste! I have now limited it to 10GB maximum. Can you believe that? It's ridiculous! Luckily I have just saved myself £70!

When trying to add a service reference to my SilverLight project I kept getting this error message The contract name xxxxxxx could not be found in the list of contracts implemented by the service I looked around the web and couldn't find anything of any use (yes, I had added ServiceContract to my interface). The solution was really simple! In my Web.Config I had the wrong interface defined. IApplicationService was defined in another assembly, one I had added a namespace to, so I additionally needed to add the namespace before the interface name. All I then had to do was to add the following attribute to the service implementing the interface and it seemed to import fine. [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode=AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)]