Wednesday, March 18, 2009

One for the SharePoint 2007 community... Please welcome the "SharePoint Farm Browser" (Source Code available)!!!


Dear fellow SharePoint developers and administrators!

I am pleased to announce the "SharePoint Farm Browser for MOSS 2007" (you're going to love it) :)

I have been working with SharePoint for nearly 10 years, I actually started with the 2001 version back in the days...

Since then all my jobs have been around SharePoint and there is a tool that is SOOOOO needed in the MOSS world: an easy, quick and efficient way to view the ENTIRE SharePoint farm structure and some high level usage data.

Until today, only certain 3rd party tools could do that such as AvePoint Discovery tool and also credits to a few SharePoint bloggers for some code snippets that loop through Web Applications, Site Collections, Webs and SubWebs... but nothing was really doing the job properly FOR FREE!

The SharePoint Farm Browser is trying to tie everything together in one very simple "one form" win app.

The beauty of it is that it is a multi-threaded application and allows a SharePoint farm admin to view where the UI is at as it is traversing the SharePoint structure.

When the tool is finished you can produce 2 types of reports.

1. An XML file easily opened in IE and showing the farm structure
2. A CSV file showing the complete structure along with some high level usage data

Here is the code and I will put it on CodePlex when their servers are back up!



Hope this helps and saves some of you SharePoint workers some time and money!

Maybe that will help me become an MVP too... ;)

Cheers,
Etienne

Friday, November 07, 2008

How to view the raw XML spat out by SharePoint Designer datasources

Hi SharePoint Guys & Girls!

Just a quickie, cause I'm always struggling to find that information.

Here is a very simple XSLT to view the raw XML spat out by SharePoint Designer's various SPDatasource objects:

I always forget it and spend hours looking for it on the web...

The link from the Microsoft website is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms546985.aspx


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:copy-of select="*"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


Cheers,
Etienne

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Organise & Manage Multiple Remote Desktop Connections Easily with Windows Out-Of-The-Box!

Today is one of these days where I feel proud of myself!
I know there is not much to be proud of but I've saved myself so much time in the long run with this...

Look at that screenshot mister server man :)
I only need to double click on any of there entries to connect to the server(s) I like.
No need for a crappy 3rd party product, just simple out of the box Windows stuff!




You know when you have been in need of a life/time saving tool for ages without really finding exactly what you wanted and one day you come up with this brilliant, easy to implement and shining-by-its-simplicity idea all by yourself... well today is one of these days for me.

And I'm so excited about it I need to tell you all about it and finally end this very long period of non activity on this "dusty" blog.

How many of you have to manage more than let's say 5 servers from your Windows client?
If you're a network admin or a SharePoint guy just like me, you may even have around 20 servers to potentially connect to on a daily basis.

Also I bet quite a few admins out there are using Windows Remote Destop Connections (RDP) to connect to these servers?

Now, within that group of people how many of you have saved the RDP connection settings along with connection credentials and created a shortcut on their desktop to be able to instantly connect to the relevant machine by simply double clicking on the icon? (surely I'm not the only one here...)

If you're like me and you are really lazy that's exactly what you've done so far cause if you're like me and you've got 20 servers that you need to connect to on a daily basis, you don't want to have to type in your password and login details every single time.

Now, 20 desktop shortcuts can take a lot of room on your desktop:



I have been looking for a neat way to organise all these shorcuts for ages and came across a few badly implemented solutions until I re-discovered this fantastic Windows out-of-the-box function that "New Folder" is :)

For all the admins out there, please try this out:

1. Create a new folder on your desktop called "RDP"
2. Open Windows Remote Desktop Connection


3. Type in the name of the server you wish to connect to and select all your favourite RDP options
4. Don't forget to click the "Allow me to save credentials" box if you're a lazy b**** like me.
5. Hit "Save As..." and save these RDP connection settings to the folder created in step 1
6. Hit "Connect"
7. You may get this warning, tick the "Don't ask me again..." box


8. Then you will get this box if you've completed step 4 successfully


9. I can hear you already saying "I thought this article was going to save me some time, but in fact there is more popups I need to click on than on my favourite naughty sites !?" don't worry these popups will only appear once... and no more!
10. You will now get this window and hopefully be able to enter your password correctly (don't forget the old "CAPS LOCK ON"...)
11. Have a cup of tea cause steps 1 to 10 were quite daunting and complex

Now comes the fun.

Repeat step 2 to 11 till you have all your servers saved in your newly created folder.
Then follow this:

1. In the "View" menu > Toolbars, untick "Standard Buttons", "Link" and "Address" bars
2. Still in the "View" menu, untick "Status Bar"
3. Still in the "View" menu select "List"

4. And the final touch, resize the window to look a little thinner

If you are a purist you can even do like me and associate a custom icon to this folder so it looks a bit more like an app an meaningful (notice the RDP icon on this desktop).
And you can just drag & drop it to the "Startup" folder so it comes up everytime you restart the computer!
Beautifully simple and efficient, the final result is stunning and is definitely worth this epic blog article ;p

Have fun people and take care!

Microsoft SkyDrive Rocks!

Well, what can I say, 5 GB of free storage offered by Microsoft for free with a very funky web interface and upload tool (even if it is an ActiveX) ?

http://skydrive.live.com/

It would be silly not to make the most of it really...

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Personal review of Visual Studio Orcas beta 1

Hi all,

I know it's been a while, usual stuff really, swamped in a project up to my neck!
Blogging then becomes less of a priority ;)

However let me tell you a few things about the new Microsoft Visual Studio "Orcas" beta 1 release, which I am currently testing on my huge dual core AMD 64 bit, 4 Gb RAM, 500 Gb hard drive, Vista 64 business monster of a development machine.

I have to say, this release looks amazing and is packed with functionality that I have really been looking forward to.

However first impression is : very slow compared to VS 2005 (even on the PC described above). Maybe it's due to all this fancy new intellisense that ships with it, but big pages/controls take longer to be loaded/compiled. Don't even try the design view for complex pages, it's a nightmare... I've just disabled it.

Still, it's very usable and my general view on this new product is very positive indeed.

The good bits:
  • Much better intellisense
  • Great client side script step-by-step debugging!!! (F10 works on client side scripts!!!)
  • LINQ (fantastic)
  • Support for WPF and SilverLight (still have to be convinced by SilverLight I have to say...)
The bad bits:
  • Quite a bit slower than VS 2005 although usable
  • Had a few nasty crashes when "alt-tabbing" between a resource file (as in localization resource file) and a text editor called EditPadLight that I really like.
  • Other miscellaneous crashes, but nothing too bad for a beta release ;)
  • The "Copy website" function is still very bad and could have been improved...
So basically, my initial mark for Visual Studio Orcas beta 1 is: 85%

Will definitely make the move when it's released. Thanks for reading!

Cheers people and take it easy.

PS: You can find the Visual Studio "Orcas" files here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

If you need tips to download the huge image files from the Microsoft website, read Jon Galloway's blog otherwise you can use the MSDN Subscriber downloader as explained on the link above:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2006/09/30/Orcas-VPC-Download-info.aspx

Monday, May 14, 2007

How to get the ASP.NET Commerce Starter Kit 2.0 to run in medium trust !

Hi guys,

I am sure many of you will loooove this article.

IT IS POSSIBLE TO GET THE COMMERCE STARTER KIT TO WORK IN MEDIUM TRUST!!!

You can follow the instructions below, alternatively you can download the C# code from my SkyDrive:



I have been now fighting for a while to get the wonderful ASP.NET Commerce Starter
Kit 2.0 to work on my ISP Shared hosting server.

At first I thought it was a lost battle and started coding the CSK without SubSonic, Entreprise Library or any of this fancy stuff that requires full trust to run properly.

But after battling harder, I noticed a few things that changed my life yesterday and let me share my findings with you all!

Here is how I got there :

1. I added this line in the CSK web.config so it would simulate my hosting service environment on my dev machine :

<trust level="Medium" />


I also prevented SubSonic from using the Entreprise Library data access and to use the more supported SqlDataProvider (not sure this made a difference but I would like to mention it) :

<SubSonicService defaultProvider="ELib2DataProvider">
<providers>
<!--<add name="ELib2DataProvider" type="SubSonic.ELib2DataProvider, SubSonic" connectionStringName="CommerceTemplate"/>-->
<add name="ELib2DataProvider" type="SubSonic.SqlDataProvider, SubSonic" connectionStringName="CommerceTemplate" />
</providers>
</SubSonicService>


2. I updated the ATLAS stuff with the latest from Microsoft (optional):
http://ajax.asp.net/

Notes :

  • With that step more changes to the web.config are required (cf the web.config of the ajax web extensions).
  • Also I moved the ScriptManagers to the master pages (admin and site) and removed them from other pages, that way you always have ajax enabled pages :)
  • There is also an attribute that you need to remove from the ScriptManager or it won't compile.
  • One last thing you also have to replace the "Mode" attribute of all your UpdatePanels and change it to "UpdateMode".
3. In the App_Code\Configuration\SiteConfig.cs change the lines that say:
config.GetSection... to ConfigurationManager.GetSection
And rem out the line that says :

Dim config As System.Configuration.Configuration = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath)


This will try to access your web.config file and save it, which is NOT allowed in partial trust.
The only pages that use this to write to the file are the Payment, Shipping and Tax configuration pages in the admin. I have simply disabled the "config.save" (i.e. rem'd it out) in those pages and you just need to go and configure those values manually in the web.config before you publish the code.

4. Next thing is to get rid of the eWorld.UI assembly all together cause it needs full trust to run and to replace the controls used in the CSK by nice new shiny AjaxControlToolkit controls (NumericBox to TextBox and Calendar are the only ones that I found in the project). Best to delete the eWorld.UI.dll from the bin folder and compile to see where we have to make the changes :o)

In order to use the AjaxControlToolkit you must put the AjaxControlToolKit dll in your bin folder and register it in the page :

<%@ Register Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" TagPrefix="ajaxToolkit" %>


Then you can replace everywhere it says "ew:NumericBox" by "asp:TextBox" and get rid of the :

<%@ Register Assembly="eWorld.UI" Namespace="eWorld.UI" TagPrefix="ew" %>


Finally for the calendar, replace :

<ew:calendarpopup id="txtExpirationDate" runat="server"></ew:calendarpopup>


By:

<asp:TextBox ID="txtExpirationDate" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
<ajaxToolkit:CalendarExtender ID="CalendarExtender1" runat="server" TargetControlID="txtExpirationDate" Format="dd/MM/yyyy" />


Another thing, once you have done that some of your code behind files will stop working and you will have to replace the old "PostedDate" or "SelectedDate" of the old calendar controls by the "Text" property of your textbox.

Also everytime you need to set a datetime datafield just do DateTime.Parse(textbox.Text) instead of the old eWorldUIOldTextBox.SelectedDate.

There will also be occurrences of this sort of thing which will not pass the compilation:

calEnd.SelectedDate = DateTime.Today


Just replace it with:

calEnd.Text = String.Format("{0:dd/MM/yyyy}", DateTime.Today)


Or this sort of thing :

calEnd.SelectedDate


Replace it with :

DateTime.Parse(calEnd.Text)


There might be more small code changes that I forgot to document here but I will let you find out by yourself, you've got the general idea!

Once the project compiles locally with those changes and in medium trust (cf step 1) then you can publish it (Build > Publish Website) and compile it to a location on your hard drive. Copy the files to your ISP with the correct DB connection strings and that's it! (I agree it's actually quite a lot!)

If you need the code, drop me a line with your email address and I will send it to you.

I have tried to look at contributing in CodePlex for the CSK but the lack of documentation on how to do that made me loose motivation...

On the other hand, the changes that I have made so far may have other impacts on other functions of the CSK so following my advice is at your own risk, you are responsible for any change you make to the code :o)

From what I have seen so far though, everything works like a charm on a shared hosting server!!!

Good luck and let me know your feedback.

Cheers!

UPDATE 07/01/2008: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU ARE GETTING THE INFAMOUS
"The SqlParameterCollection only accepts non-null SqlParameter type objects, not QueryParameter objects" ERROR

I received quite a few emails about this as it is a problem when using the CSK code and the solution is here:

You need to edit the OrderController.vb (or .cs) to include this function:


Public Shared Function GetDBCommand(ByVal objSubCom As SubSonic.QueryCommand) As DbCommand

Dim objDbCom As DbCommand
Dim objSqlCon As New SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("LocalSqlServer").ToString)

objDbCom = objSqlCon.CreateCommand()
objDbCom.CommandText = objSubCom.CommandSql
objDbCom.CommandType = objSubCom.CommandType

Dim par As QueryParameter
Dim objSqlParam As SqlParameter

For Each par In objSubCom.Parameters

objSqlParam = New SqlParameter

objSqlParam.DbType = par.DataType
objSqlParam.ParameterName = par.ParameterName
objSqlParam.Value = par.ParameterValue

objDbCom.Parameters.Add(objSqlParam)
Next

Return objDbCom

End Function


Then replace all the lines that say:


order.GetUpdateCommand(Utility.GetUserName()).ToDbCommand


With this line calling the new function bypassing the subsonic call:


GetDBCommand(order.GetUpdateCommand(Utility.GetUserName()))


The ToDbCommand is the one causing the error and it's a Subsonic function. It is only throwing the error when using the SqlProvider to connect to the DB (from the SubSonic dll). So the new GetDBCommand that I wrote is a workaround that bypasses that function...

Add columns programmatically to a GridView and style the rows

A friend of mine asked me how to programmatically add columns to a GridView and I found this great article which I hope will help some of you too :

http://www.gridviewguy.com/ArticleDetails.aspx?articleID=29

He also asked me how to style the Grids the best possible way and to modify the style of some control in it, maybe just one cell.

As far as the general style is concerned I advise you to use a .skin file in the "Themes" folder of your ASP.NET 2.0 app. In this file the following declaration will map the GridView items to CSS classes :



<asp:GridView SkinID="" runat="server" CellPadding="4" GridLines="Both" CssClass="GridView" Width="100%" BorderColor="#ECECEC" BorderStyle="Solid">
<HeaderStyle CssClass="GridHeader" />
<FooterStyle CssClass="GridFooter" />
<SelectedRowStyle CssClass="GridSelectedRow" />
<AlternatingRowStyle CssClass="GridAlternatingRow" />
<EditRowStyle CssClass="GridEditRow" />
<RowStyle CssClass="GridRow" />
<PagerStyle CssClass="GridPager" />
<EmptyDataRowStyle CssClass="GridEmptyRow" />
</asp:GridView>


In a css file, you can then create the relevant classes like GridHeader, etc.

If you need to modify a row or some element of it when the Grid is being "written" you should do it in the RowDataBound event as follows:



Protected Sub myGridView_RowDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridViewRowEventArgs) Handles myGridView.RowDataBound()
If e.Row.RowType = DataControlRowType.DataRow Then
Dim objButton As Button
objButton = CType(e.Row.FindControl("cmdButtonInTheRow"), Button)
If IsDBNull(e.Row.DataItem("MyDataFieldValue")) Then
objButton.Enabled = False
ElseIf e.Row.DataItem("MyDataFieldValue") = "SOME_VALUE" Then
objButton.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromName("White")
Else
objButton.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromName("Green")
e.Row.BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromName("Red")
e.Row.Cells(3).BackColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromName("Yellow")
e.Row.Cells(4).ForeColor = System.Drawing.Color.FromName("Pink")
End
End If
End If
End Sub


Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The coolest shortcut of them all !...

Hi people,

In the shortcut series, I have found the coolest of them all!
The new ALT+TAB in Vista :

Try the "Windows Key" + TAB and tell me what you think...

If you want more here it is

I am really starting to love Vista, the only thing I don't like about it is that I'm going to have to buy 2 more Gb of RAM...

Oh well... progress hey?

Thanks to Microsoft for a cool OS!

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

NetSpell checker works in medium trust environment using AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute

Hi all,

just a quickie, I have been using this fantastic open source free spell checker and I am very happy with it as it is completely integrated to the FreeTextBox.

It is called NetSpell and in order to download it you must go to this site :
http://www.loresoft.com/Applications/NetSpell/default.aspx

The problem is when you try to make netspell work in a shared hosting environment that will be more secure than your dev webserver and will more than likely run in medium trust.

The only problem is that NetSpell does not by default allow the assembly to run in partial trust and therefore the only way to get it to work is to add :

[assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute()]

line to the AssemblyInfo.cs file of the NetSpell.SpellChecker project

Soooooo....

1. I downloaded the code locally to my C: drive,
The full source is available here using the mighty SVN source code manager :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/netspell/

2. Went to the ..\NetSpell\trunk\NetSpell\src\NetSpell.SpellChecker folder,
3. Edited the AssemblyInfo.cs file to include [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute()]
4. Added a reference at the top of the file to using System.Security;
(required for the AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute element to work)
5. Recompiled the project
6. Copied the new NetSpell.SpellChecker.dll to my web project and...
7. BINGO! everything worked like a charm on my medium trust environment!!!

Hope those who struggled with this will manage to find my post and solve their problem!

Cheers,
Etienne