I’m recording this here so I don’t ever have to look for this solution again. It works perfectly with .net date json serialization and +400 timezones as well!
var date = new Date(parseInt(jsonDate.substr(6)));
The substr strips out the leading “Date” meta text.
Just like when I was learning regular expression, I find that I’m using Linq to do more and more with my data objects the more I use it.
Also with regular expression I’m wary of using it because it’s still not in the “everyday developer’s” skill set and if said developer ever has to debug my work, they might find it a steep learning curve.
This example however I think this code for converting a List<> to a List<SelectListItem> is pretty neat and self explanatory:
List<SelectListItem> SelectListItemList =
(
from rec in myReadList
select new SelectListItem
{
Text = rec.Value,
Value = rec.Key
}
).ToList();
However, for those who DO want an explanation, this is what is happening:
For those who find the example above too long, here is the short-hand version. (It’s just one line, but broken so it wraps well)
List<SelectListItem> SelectListItemList =
myReadList.Select(
rec => new SelectListItem
{ Text = rec.Value, Value = rec.Key }).ToList();
UPDATE: For those wishing to set a default or selected item can find a solution (as chosen) at StackOverflow.
CSLA is a pretty good middle-tier framework (though not without it’s complexity or problems). A colleague and I were discussing that for small organisations, it’s just not worth implementing it if you’re not going to be running the factory methods on one server and the executions method on another server…. but that is not what I’m here to talk about!
So my problem with CSLA today is that when I want to invoke an exception from the bowels of an internal method, it is wrapped up nicely in a CSLA defined exception. This means I can’t catch my exception like this:
try
{
user = UserCsla.GetById(userId);
}
catch (DataNotFoundException dNFExc) // !!! THIS WON'T WORK !!!
{
//user not found
user = new User();
}
I know my exception is in there somewhere, but I don’t want to catch ALL exceptions in case something unexpected happens. In that case I want the exception to keep bubbling.
My solution is to write an extension method for class Exception, that will recursively plumb the depths of .InnerException and see if it contains a certain type.
Extension Method:
public static class ExceptionExtender
{
///
/// Recurses Inner Exceptions and returns true if
/// the exception type is found in the stack
///
public static bool Contains(this Exception exception,
Type exceptionType)
{
if (exception.GetType().Equals(exceptionType))
{
return true;
}
if (exception.InnerException != null)
{
return exception.InnerException
.Contains(exceptionType);
}
return false;
}
}
Using it:
try
{
user = UserCsla.GetById(userId);
}
catch (Exception exc)
{
if (exc.Contains(typeof(DataNotFoundException)))
{
//user not found
user = new User();
}
else
{
throw;
}
}
Extra Note: I am aware that a better way to consume this data would be to have .GetById(userId) return a null value if the user isn’t found. The method was created by another developer with that behaviour intentionally, and to consume it, I had to live by its rules.
Over at my favourite design website, they are discussing how to make a table of data gracefully upgrade itself from a table to a graph.. but to still be available as a table to non-supported browsers and spider-bots.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/svg-with-a-little-help-from-raphael/
NOTE: Be aware, that at the time of writing, there is a bug that orders pie chart items by the highest to lowest value. You can track the bug (and the fix) at the repository at GitHub.
NOTE: Be also aware that if you have values with a large difference (one is 1,000,000 and the other is 10), that it currently has a rendering issue that prevent the whole graph from loading. You can track the bug (and the fix) at the repository at GitHub.
A 6+ part series of “How-To’s” on getting started and mastering NHibernate.
I was reading a hints article regarding MVC and I came across a novel way of ensuring that you never have to ask a client to “Try clearing your cache”.
All you have to do is:
So your resources will be cached until your version rebuilds, when the resource url will change!
This is actually getting into my next blog post, but figure out a way to version your JavaScript and CSS. This really isn’t MVC specific, you should do this in almost any project. The key reason is to help you with a browser’s cache. You know you have a problem when the first thing someone tells you, when asking for help, is that they cleared their cache already. My thought on this is your web app’s dll should have a version number, set the project to auto version, and then pop that onto the end of the css/javascript file call. So it might look like this: ”http://myapp/…/file.css?version=1.0.0.256″. In my sample code, when in development I stick a timestamp on the file in the same way.
Since my recent, torrid love affair with all things jQuery, I decided to go back to Greasemonkey and see if I could integrate it with jQuery to make selection and manipulation jsut THAT much easier.. and guess what? …it is!
If you use the following script.. jQuery will be registered from Google’s CDN and then the code will loop until the script is included in the DOM and then execute the doReady() function.
Use this template for all your jQuery / Greasemonkey scripting pleasures:
// ==UserScript==
// @name jQuery include template
// @namespace evildonald.net
// @include http://the.pagedomain.com/
// ==/UserScript==
// include an external javascript file
function include(filename)
{
var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
script = document.createElement('script');
script.src = filename;
script.type = 'text/javascript';
head.appendChild(script);
checkJQueryLoaded();
}
// Check if jQuery is loaded
function checkJQueryLoaded()
{
if (typeof unsafeWindow.jQuery == 'undefined')
{
window.setTimeout(checkJQueryLoaded, 100);
}
else
{
$ = unsafeWindow.jQuery;
$(document).ready(doReady);
}
}
// initialize the page
function doReady()
{
alert($); // this proves jQuery is loaded
}
include('http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery' +
'/1.3.2/jquery.min.js');
Many thanks go to Joan Peidra for their invaluable method for testing if jQuery is loaded
Sometimes you really want something to stand out. Unix banners are a great universal way of marking up text with an important message, but not having access to a Unix system, I couldn’t generate one!
Fortunately, this site has come up with the goods and will let you generate banners in a myriad of “fonts”. The example below was generated in “Letters” font.
OOOOO BBBBB SSSSS OOOOO LL EEEEEEE TTTTTTT EEEEEEE OO OO BB B SS OO OO LL EE TTT EE OO OO BBBBBB SSSSS OO OO LL EEEEE TTT EEEEE OO OO BB BB SS OO OO LL EE TTT EE OOOO0 BBBBBB SSSSS OOOO0 LLLLLLL EEEEEEE TTT EEEEEEE
UPDATE: My co-worker BH was auditing/refactoring all stored procedures and seemed to really like the OBSOLETE headers. It made his job easier being able to see straight away that he didn’t need to process that proc.
A lot of forms have input fields with multiple action buttons that act on that data. MVC doesn’t immediately offer an ability to detect which submit button was clicked.
One solution is to use different forms that are tagged with action labels that will invoke a method in a controller. The following works:
<% using (Html.BeginForm("Action1", "ControllerName")) { %>
<%= Html.TextBox("Id") %>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />
<% } // end form %>
<% using (Html.BeginForm("Action2", "ControllerName")) { %>
<%= Html.TextBox("Id") %>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />
<% } // end form %>
But what if you want to use the same input fields for both submit buttons? A submit will only POST back the named fields that are in the same form as it. You might consider the following solution, but it will not work:
<% using (Html.BeginForm() { %>
<%= Html.TextBox("Id") %>
<% } // end form %>
<% using (Html.BeginForm("Action1", "ControllerName")) { %>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />
<% } // end form %>
<% using (Html.BeginForm("Action2", "ControllerName")) { %>
<input type="submit" value="Save" />
<% } // end form %>
As a better solution, I like to name all the submit buttons with the same name, and have each button have it’s own value.
<% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%>
<%= Html.TextBox("Id") %>
<input type="submit" value="Action1" name="SubmitButton" />
<input type="submit" value="Action2" name="SubmitButton" />
<% } // end form %>
Then all I need to do is capture the value of the POST item “SubmitButton” and I can perform business logic on what value is returned!
Here is a sample Model:
[Serializable]
public class MyModel
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string SubmitButton { get; set; }
}
Here is a sample Controller:
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Post)]
public ActionResult DoSomething(MyModel model)
{
if (model.SubmitButton.Equals("Action1",
StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
return RedirectToAction("Action1", new { id = model.Id });
}
else if (model.SubmitButton.Equals("Action2",
StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
return RedirectToAction("Action2", new { id = model.Id });
}
return View();
}
So we’re starting new development on a web project. We’re also using Oracle with packages.
DBParameter doesn’t support ICloneable. I wanted to clone my DBParameter collection because when I cached them, and then tried to reuse them, i was re-using a reference to the parameter which was already used in a different command object. This would throw a runtime error of “The OracleParameter is already contained by another OracleParameterCollection.”
The trick to getting around this is realising that even though DBParameter doesn’t support ICloneable, OracleParameter which inherits from DBParameter does! In my application I’m only dealing with Oracle databases, but I think this applies to SqlParameter and OLEDBParameter as well.
Just for kicks, I also made it an extension method because I like ‘em!
using System;
using System.Data.Common;
namespace MyProject
{
public static class DBParameterExtension
{
public static DbParameter Clone(this DbParameter param)
{
ICloneable cloneableParameter = param as ICloneable;
if (cloneableParameter != null)
{
return cloneableParameter.Clone() as DbParameter;
}
else
{
throw new ApplicationException(
string.Format("Unable to clone parameter {0}",
param.ParameterName));
}
}
}
}
There are a lot of dodgy freeware products out there. These do exactly what the name says:
For anything else, someone with more patience than me has created a pretty comprehensive list of freeware.
I’m just listing this because I ALWAYS forget the syntax for this small stuff.
Converting Varchar2 to Date:
SELECT to_date('01-JUL-2009','dd-mon-yyyy')
FROM Dual;
Using todays date to build a relative date:
SELECT trunc(sysdate + 36)
FROM Dual;
It can be vitally important to know if an object is being referenced in a stored procedure or function, and although TOAD very helpfully will tell you all dependencies of an object, it is possible (if you are working on a horrible legacy project like me), to have SQL created on the fly and executed as a string. Yech!
SQL for searching your oracle procedures and functions:
SELECT *
FROM USER_SOURCE
WHERE LOWER(TEXT) LIKE LOWER('%to_date%')
UPDATE:I’ve also decided to include some code to search tables that contain a keyword. This can be very useful if you have a column name but don’t know table it’s contained in
SELECT *
FROM all_tab_columns
WHERE LOWER(column_name) LIKE LOWER('%SearchTerm%');
