Happy Programming!

In other interesting news, recently I found out that my employer is also looking to developing an Android application for our customers, so I may be able to get in on some of that action over the next few months if I really can wrap my head around this new platform. Anyways, I just though I would share that with you incase you were looking for an adventure in mobile application development. Until next time…

Happy coding!

Last week I wanted to generate a object wrapper around the <appSettings> section in my web.config/app.config file and after doing the same thing over and over again by generating a public read-only property for each setting, I decided to use T4 to read the <appSettings> section and generate a class all the properties that would become the wrapper around the ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[“…”] calls to retrieve the settings. To my surprise, this was pretty easy to do. I did a C# and VB.Net version and here is the C# version of the T4 template.

<#@ assembly name="System.Core" #>
<#@ assembly name="System.Xml" #>
<#@ assembly name="System.Xml.Linq" #>
<#@ import namespace="System" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Text" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.IO" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Linq" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Xml.Linq" #>
<#@ import namespace="Microsoft.VisualBasic" #>
<#@ template language="VBv3.5" debug="True" hostspecific="True"  #>
<#@ output extension=".g.cs" #>
<#
	Dim projectNamespace as String = "SettingsGenerator"
	Dim fileName as String = "app.config"
	Dim path as String = ""

	Try
		path = Host.ResolvePath(fileName)
	Catch
		Try
			If fileName.ToLower() = "app.config" then
				fileName = "web.config"
			Else If fileName.ToLower() = "web.config" then
				fileName = "app.config"
			End If
			path = Host.ResolvePath(fileName)
		Catch
			path = "<< App.config or Web.config not found within the project >>"
		End Try
	End Try
#>
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// FileName = <#= path #>
// Generated at <#= Now.ToLocaltime() #>
//
// <auto-generated>
//     This code was generated by a tool.
//
//     Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if
//     the code is regenerated.
//
//	  NOTE: Please use the Add a Reference to System.Configuration assembly if
//	        you get compile errors with ConfigurationManager
// </auto-generated>
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------

using System.Configuration;

public static class AppSettings {

<#= RenderApplicationSettings(path) #>
}

<#+ 

	Public Shared Function RenderApplicationSettings(ByVal path as String) as String
		If Not File.Exists(path) Then Return ""

		Dim sb as New StringBuilder()

		Dim doc as XDocument = XDocument.Load(path)

		For Each result as XElement in doc...<appSettings>.<add>
			sb.Append(vbTab)
			sb.Append("public static string " + result.@key + "{")
			sb.AppendLine()
			sb.AppendLine(vbTab + vbTab + "get {")
			sb.AppendFormat("{0}return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[""{1}""];{2}", vbTab + vbTab + vbTab, result.@key, vbCrLf)
			sb.AppendLine(vbTab + vbTab + "}")
			sb.Append(vbTab)
			sb.AppendLine("}")
			sb.AppendLine()
		Next

		Return sb.ToString()

	End Function
#>

Click the download images below to download the templates for both VB and C#. Until next time…

Happy Programming!

Happy Programming!

Happy Programming!

So, what’s up with the name Cheyenne? Good question.  Well, after a few days I couldn’t find a good name I like so I decided to use my 20 month old daughters middle name. Yes, Daddy has a soft spot and she is it!

This web application will be built using the ASP.NET MVC framework.  I will be using a SQL 2008 Express database and using LINQ to SQL as my data layer.  I will be using the Repository Pattern to provide some layer of abstraction over my data layer just in case I want to easily swap out my data access implementation.  

Here are some screen shots of what the project looks like in Visual Studio 2008:

Here is what the Entities and the Repository classes look like:

I want to see the code!  Ok…I was just getting to that. I uploaded the first installment to my Windows Sky Drive account and you can download it below:

Let me know what you think. There is currently no user interface! Actually, the MVC project don’t currently run at the moment; but the project does compile. I removed all the defaults that the MVC project gave me since I wanted to start out from scratch. Hopefully, by the next installment I will have a basic UI and have some data loaded on the screen.  If you have any suggestions or comments, let me know. Until next time…

Happy Programming!

So, I’ve decided on building a job board application. No, I’m not trying to be the next Monster.com, although that would be nice. I just want to provide something that is simple to use and plays nicely with the social media networks that have gotten so popular over the past few years. Here are a list of features that I have so far:

• ASP.NET MVC Application
• Simple and clean user interface
• Simple interface to search the job board.
• All job postings are public
• Easy authentication ( OpenId, Facebook Connect, Custom )
• Web  2.0 centric  ( AJAX, RSS, IE8 Slices )
• Allow easy sharing job postings with popular social networking sites ( Twitter, Facebook, Digg )
• Allow only registered user’s to respond to job postings in a private manner.
• Allow job posters to respond to job inquiries.
• Provide an easy to use interface for any registered user to post a job
• Job posting can be tagged with certain keywords.
• Provide a mechanism for user’s to provide feedback for the overall site

Ok. Easy enough?  Well, If I’m going to pull this off then I will have to get familiar with many of the social media integration API platforms since this will be the first time using any of them. But; have no fear. There is a lot of resources out there to look at and most of all, I have YOU here to help me.

I’m not sure how long this is going to take. I do have a full-time job and I do have to spend time with my family and like I said, no deadlines! I will try to provide a part one to this series of blog post within a week. Oh, I just broke my rule about no deadlines. Until next time…

Happy Programming!

To get the feature to work, all you have to do was add configuration element to your web.config and then you are off and running. Here is what it looked like:

    <urlMappings>
      <add url="~/SomePageThatDidNotHaveToExist.aspx" mappedUrl="~/SomePageThatHasToExist.aspx?id=123&cat=somecat" />
    </urlMappings>

Once you place this section in the <system.web> section, all your users would have to access is the SomePageThatDidNotHaveToExist.aspx page and ASP.NET would translate that url into the actual url with the additional querystring parameters at the very end. So, I didn’t have to use any third party components since my needs were very simple. Hope you find some use for this forgotten feature. Until next time…

Happy Programming!

As you know, MIT is one of the best technology institution in the nation and anything they can offer for free is invaluable. The Khan Academy on the other hand is not affiliated with any college or university; but the individual that provides the free resources is a MIT graduate and a Harvard Business School MBA graduate. I have enjoyed many of his math courses and he does a far better job explaining things than the majority of my undergraduate professors. 

I do intend to go back to school someday; however I have not decided on any program as yet and no doubt I would have to brush up on a few things. So these resources will come in very handy for me. I hope you find some use for these as well. There is that saying that “knowledge is power”.  Until next time…

Happy Learning! 

Happy Programming!