Chrissie1's Blog

Moved blog

Chrissie1 — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:48:39 GMT

I moved my blog to http://blogs.lessthandot.com

Lessthandot has launched

Chrissie1 — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:39:16 GMT

Yes, LessThanDot is finaly live and kicking.

LessThanDot launches june 1st

Chrissie1 — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:01:52 GMT

Me and some other people have been working on a brilliant new site it is called LessThanDot and it contains a wiki, blog and forums all accessible via a single login. Please visit us from the first of june onwards at http://www.lessthandot.com

File Unlocker for Windows

Chrissie1 — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:13:19 GMT

On windows files can be locked by different programs. This little gem unlocks your file so that you can delete it.

Do automated restore tests on your SQL-Backups.

Chrissie1 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:00:00 GMT

I found out yesterday that my sql server backups were corrupt and so I couldn't restore them (happy me). So I went out on Google and combined a few things to make this

declare @verifystatement nvarchar(250) declare @backupdevice nvarchar(250) declare @err int set @backupdevice
=     (SELECT     TOP 1
[physical_device_name]             FROM     msdb.dbo.backupmediafamily
backupmediafamily                 JOIN msdb.dbo.backupset
backupset ON backupmediafamily.media_set_id
= backupset.media_set_id                 and backupset.backup_start_date
= (    SELECT max(backup_start_date)
                                    FROM msdb.dbo.backupset
child                                     WHERE child.database_name
= backupset.database_name and child.type
= 'D')
                and database_name
= 'TexDatabase'                 and backupset.type
= 'D') set @verifystatement
= 'restore
verifyonly from disk = ''' + @backupdevice + '''' exec sp_executesql @verifystatement SELECT @err
= @@error if @err
<> 0         begin             insert into utils.dbo.tbl_backupverify(BackupDevice,BackupStatus,BackupError,
VerifyStatement)             values (@backupdevice, 'Failed',
@err, @verifystatement)         end         else         begin             insert into utils.dbo.tbl_backupverify(BackupDevice,BackupStatus)
            values (@backupdevice, 'Succes')
        end

Just put it in a Store procedure and run it as a job.

This is the tbl_BackupVerify create table statement.

if exists (select * from dbo.sysobjects where id
= object_id(N'[dbo].[tbl_BackupVerify]') and OBJECTPROPERTY(id,
N'IsUserTable')
= 1) drop table [dbo].[tbl_BackupVerify]
GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tbl_BackupVerify]
(     [Id] [int] IDENTITY (1,
1) NOT NULL ,
    [BackupDevice] [nvarchar]
(250) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS NOT NULL ,
    [BackupStatus] [nvarchar]
(50) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS NOT NULL ,
    [VerifyDate] [datetime] NOT NULL ,
    [BackupError] [bigint] NULL ,
    [VerifyStatement] [nvarchar]
(500) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS NULL ) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

You could add this as a scheduled job in sql-server.

Just don't forget to check the log table or make it send an email.

Find the last Backup taken in SQL Server

Chrissie1 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:38:06 GMT

SELECT * FROM msdb.dbo.backupmediafamily
backupmediafamily JOIN msdb.dbo.backupset
backupset ON backupmediafamily.media_set_id
= backupset.media_set_id and backupset.backup_start_date
= (SELECT max(backup_start_date) FROM msdb.dbo.backupset
child WHERE child.database_name
= backupset.database_name and child.type
= 'D') and database_name
= 'ReplaceWithDatabaseNameHere' and backupset.type
= 'D'

This is Based on something I found here. Thank you mrDenny.

And this works in SQL Server 2000.

Resharper File template for Nunit testing with Structuremap support for VB.Net

Chrissie1 — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:52:23 GMT

So I also made the a similar template with structuremap support included.

Wich looks something like this

Imports Nunit.FrameWork Imports StructureMap Namespace $NAMESPACE$
    '''
<summary>     '''
A TestClass     '''
</summary>     '''
<remarks></remarks>     <TestFixture()>
_     Public Class $CLASSNAME$
     #Region "
Setup and TearDown "         '''
<summary>         '''
Sets up the Tests         '''
</summary>         '''
<remarks></remarks>         <Setup()>
_         Public Sub Setup()
    StructureMapConfiguration.UseDefaultStructureMapConfigFile = False         StructureMapConfiguration.ScanAssemblies.IncludeTheCallingAssembly()
        End Sub         '''
<summary>         '''
Tears down the test. Is executed after the Test is Completed         '''
</summary>         '''
<remarks></remarks>         <TearDown()>
_         Public Sub TearDown()
            ObjectFactory.ResetDefaults()        
    End Sub #End Region    
#Region "
Tests "     '''
<summary>         '''
A Test         '''
</summary>         '''
<remarks></remarks>      <Test()> _     Public Sub $Test_Name$()
    End Sub #End Region
    End Class End Namespace

And of course I also made an XmlFile so you can easily import it.

NunitTestFixtureWithStructureMapSupport.xml (2,44 KB)

Resharper Template Nunit TestFixture for VB.Net

Chrissie1 — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:49:23 GMT

I made a file template for resharper to make it eassier to create a TestClass

it looks like this.

Imports Nunit.FrameWork Namespace $NAMESPACE$
    '''
<summary>     '''
A TestClass     '''
</summary>     '''
<remarks></remarks>     <TestFixture()>
_     Public Class $CLASSNAME$
     #Region "
Setup and TearDown "         '''
<summary>         '''
Sets up the Tests         '''
</summary>         '''
<remarks></remarks>         <Setup()>
_         Public Sub Setup()
        End Sub         '''
<summary>         '''
Tears down the test. Is executed after the Test is Completed         '''
</summary>         '''
<remarks></remarks>         <TearDown()>
_         Public Sub TearDown()
                 End Sub #End Region    
#Region "
Tests "     '''
<summary>         '''
A Test         '''
</summary>         '''
<remarks></remarks>      <Test()> _     Public Sub $Test_Name$()
    End Sub #End Region
    End Class End Namespace

I also made an xmlFile so you can easily import it into Resharper.

NunitTestFixture.xml (2,15 KB)

Unused references

Chrissie1 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:48:41 GMT

Sometimes we just add references and never use them or use them and then remove it all again. And sometimes it is hard to say which reference we don't use anymore. Well MS has provided us with a button that looks up the unused references and if it finds ione you can remove the unused references.

So how do we do it.

First we right clikc on our project and select properties.

Then we go to the tab references and click on the button Unused References.

This will open a dialog with either a list of unused references (see below) or nothing in it.

And now you can just click remove and the references will be gone.

Changing the targeted framework in VB.NET 2008

Chrissie1 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:32:58 GMT

Changing the targeted framework of a project in VB.NET 2008 with the Visual Studio IDE goes like this.

First we click right on the project name and choose properties.

Then we select the compile tab and click on the "Advanced Compile Options..." Button.

And last but not least we select the desired framework from the list "Target framework (all configurations)".

Mocking events

Chrissie1 — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:05:57 GMT

Now that I have StructureMap and RhinoMocks in my stack I sometimes need to look for VB.Net examples of how to do things, because sometimes translating them from C# is not all that easy.

This article has helped me mocking events.

Lambda expressions

Chrissie1 — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:59:08 GMT

After reading A post by Sergio Pereira I thought about translating his code to VB.Net because as usual all the cool things are written in C#.
So this piece

 using(StreamReader
rd = File.OpenText("Data.txt")) 


{ 


string line = rd.ReadLine(); 


while(line
!= null) 


{ 


DoSomething(line); 


//
do more stuff with the line text 




//move
on 


line = rd.ReadLine(); 


} 


}

Becomes

Dim rd As System.IO.StreamReader = System.IO.File.OpenText("Data.txt")

Using (rd)



Dim line As String = rd.ReadLine()

While (line
IsNot Nothing)



dosomething(line)

'
do more stuff with the line text 




'move
on 


line = rd.ReadLine()

End While


End Using

and the next bit

 public static class FileUtil 


{ 


public static void EachLine(string fileName,
Action<string>
process) 


{ 


using(StreamReader
rd = File.OpenText(fileName)) 


{ 


string line = rd.ReadLine(); 


while(line
!= null) 


{ 


process(line); 


line = rd.ReadLine(); 


} 


} 


} 


}

will translate in

Public Class FileUtil



Public Shared Sub EachLine(ByVal fileName As String, ByVal process As Action(Of String))

Dim rd As System.IO.StreamReader = System.IO.File.OpenText(fileName)

Using (rd)



Dim Line As String = rd.ReadLine()

While (Line
IsNot Nothing)



process(Line)

Line = rd.ReadLine()

End While


End Using

End Sub


End Class

And we call that last piece of code like this

FileUtil.EachLine("Data.txt", AddressOf dosomething)

The doSomething method would look something like this

Private Sub dosomething(ByVal line As String)
MessageBox.Show(line) End Sub

And that's it.

A Little Example Of How Xlinq Can Make Life Eassier On Us

Chrissie1 — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:36:54 GMT

A little example of how xlinq can make life eassier on us. And the pitfalls on how to get it to work.

I have have an xml file named Translation_En.xml.

Translation_En.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<FormType>
<Vaccation>Vaccation</Vaccation>
<Mission>Mission</Mission>
<Holiday>Holiday</Holiday>
</FormType>

And then the class that will get the data and save it. Don't forget to set references to system.core, system.data.linq, system.xml and system.xml.linq.

Imports System.Linq



Public Class Translation

Private _Vaccation As String


Private _Mission As String


Private _Holiday As String


Private _Language As String




Public Sub New(ByVal Language As String)

_language = Language

End Sub




Public Property Language() As String


Get


Return _Language

End Get


Set(ByVal value As String)

_Language = value

End Set


End Property




Public Property Vaccation() As String


Get


_Vaccation = GetTranslation("Vaccation")

Return _Vaccation

End Get


Set(ByVal value As String)

SaveTranslation("Vaccation",value)

 _Vaccation = value

End Set


End Property




Public Property Mission() As String


Get


_Mission = GetTranslation("Mission")

Return _Mission

End Get


Set(ByVal value As String)

 SaveTranslation("Mission",value)

  _Mission = value

End Set


End Property




Public Property Holiday() As String


Get


_Holiday = GetTranslation("Holiday")

Return _Holiday

End Get


Set(ByVal value As String)

SaveTranslation("Holiday",value)

_Holiday = value

End Set


End Property




Private Function GetTranslation(ByVal Element As String) As String


Dim _return As String = Element

Try


Dim _File As XElement = XElement.Load(GetFilename)

Dim _Element As IEnumerable(Of
XElement) = From
c In _File.Elements(Element) Select c

_return = _Element.Value.ToString

Catch ex As Exception

MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)

End Try


Return _return

End Function



 Private Sub SaveTranslation(ByVal Element As String, ByVal value As String)

Dim _File As XElement = Nothing Dim _Element As IEnumerable(Of
XElement) = Nothing Try _File = XElement.Load(GetFilename)

_Element = From
c In _File.Elements(Element.ToString) Select c

_Element(0).SetValue(value)

_File.Save(GetFilename)

Catch ex As Exception

MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)

End Try End Sub
Private Function GetFilename() As
String

Return "Translation_En.xml"


End Function



 End Class

And now let me explain a bit further.
First of all this class has getters and setters but that is not important ;-)

The most iportant bit is the getranslation function.

this line gets the data from the file and puts it in an Xelement object

Dim _File As XElement = XElement.Load(GetFilename)



The next line takes out the Element we want. We don't need to specify the root
element(a misstake I made the first time around.)



Dim _Element As IEnumerable(Of
XElement) = From
c In _File.Elements(Element) Select c

The last line just takes the value of the element and puts it in a string value.

_return = _Element.Value.ToString



So that is how we get data out of one element.



Now we want to update the file and that's what savetranslation is for, it is so easy
to understand if you name your methods correctly.



Again we load the file and get the correct element



_File = XElement.Load(GetFilename)

_Element = From
c In _File.Elements(Element.ToString) Select c




Then we set the first elements vale (since we only have one returned
to us it has to be the first one). 




_Element(0).SetValue(value)




And last but not least we save the file.



_File.Save(GetFilename)




Of course you could make this a lot better. And I will in a next episode.

StructureMap and VB.NET

Chrissie1 — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:39:03 GMT

Time to use an Ioc (Inversion of Control) container like structuremap. Most if not all examples you find on the net are in C# but us VB.Net developers aren't imune for it either. So today I made my first project with structuremap. Lets' see how it goes. Thanks to Jeremy D. Miller for making this great product.

I used the atributes for this and not the external config file (aka: StructureMap.config).

I will demonstrate this by crating a Dal, A model and A view/presenter. Let's start with the Model

the interface

Namespace Model.Interfaces Public Interface IPerson Property Id() As Guid Property LastName() As String Property FirstName() As String End Interface End Namespace

the implementation

Namespace Model Public Class Person Implements Model.Interfaces.IPerson Private _lastName As String Private _id As Guid Private _firstName As String Public Sub New()
_id = New Guid
_firstName = "" _lastName = "" End Sub Public Property FirstName() As String Implements Interfaces.IPerson.FirstName Get Return _firstName End Get Set(ByVal value As String)
_firstName = value End Set End Property Public Property Id() As System.Guid Implements Interfaces.IPerson.Id Get Return _id End Get Set(ByVal value As System.Guid)
_id = value End Set End Property Public Property LastName() As String Implements Interfaces.IPerson.LastName Get Return _lastName End Get Set(ByVal value As String)
_lastName = value End Set End Property Public Overrides Function ToString() As String Return _lastName
& "
" & _firstName End Function End Class End Namespace

Nothing fancy, not even pretty. But it works.

Then the dal

I start with an interface for the factory.

Imports StructureMap Namespace Dal.Factory
<PluginFamily("SQLServerDaoFactory",
Issingleton:=True)>
_ Public Interface IDAOFactory ReadOnly Property Person() As Dal.Interfaces.IPerson End Interface End Namespace

And here we have the first attribute for structuremap. this says that if you want an instance of this interface that you will have to look for a class with an attribute plugable and a concretekey of "SQLServerDaoFactory" in other words this is the default implementation of our interface.

Now lets look at SQLServerDAOFactory.

Imports StructureMap Namespace Dal.SQLServer
<Pluggable("SQLServerDaoFactory")>
_ Public Class DaoFactory Implements Dal.Factory.IDAOFactory Public ReadOnly Property Person() As Interfaces.IPerson Implements Factory.IDAOFactory.Person Get Return ObjectFactory.GetInstance(Of
Interfaces.IPerson)() End Get End Property End Class End Namespace

so this has a plugabble attribute with SQLServerDaoFactory as key. So this is the default implementation for IDaoFactory.

Now we will create a form with 2 labels on them and One button. Just leave the standard, this is just to show how it works. I won't even bother creating a presenter, let's talk dirty.

In the form_load event you have to add this to intialize structuremap.

StructureMapConfiguration.UseDefaultStructureMapConfigFile = False StructureMapConfiguration.ScanAssemblies.IncludeTheCallingAssembly()

And in the button_click event you have to add this

Dim a As Model.Person Dim d As Dal.Factory.IDAOFactory = ObjectFactory.GetInstance(Of
Dal.Factory.IDAOFactory)() a = d.Person.FindPersonbyName("")
Label1.Text = a.FirstName
Label2.Text = a.LastName

Don't forget to add structuremap.dll as a reference and to do an imports of structuremap in the form.
As you can we are doing a getinstance on ObjectFactory this will get us the default implementation of DAOFactory. Namely SQLServerDAOFactory

So why are we doing all this? Since we could have just instantiated it the normal way without a problem.

What if we now needed to have a MySQL Database instead of SQLServer? in our normal program we had to change all the references from SQLServerDAOFactory to MySQLFactory with structuremap we just change the pluginfamily default value and create a new daofactory.

this is the new daofactory.

Imports StructureMap Namespace Dal.MySQL
<Pluggable("MySQLDaoFactory")>
_ Public Class DaoFactory Implements Dal.Factory.IDAOFactory Public ReadOnly Property Person() As Interfaces.IPerson Implements Factory.IDAOFactory.Person Get ObjectFactory.InjectStub(GetType(Interfaces.IPerson), New MySQLPerson) Return ObjectFactory.GetInstance(Of
Interfaces.IPerson)() End Get End Property End Class End Namespace

and this is the adapted idaofactory.

Imports StructureMap Namespace Dal.SQLServer
<Pluggable("MySQLDaoFactory")>
_ Public Class DaoFactory Implements Dal.Factory.IDAOFactory Public ReadOnly Property Person() As Interfaces.IPerson Implements Factory.IDAOFactory.Person Get Return ObjectFactory.GetInstance(Of
Interfaces.IPerson)() End Get End Property End Class End Namespace

and now run the code again and see the difference in the labels. So we have low coupling and high cohesion.

Hope to see you soon for part 2

Ordering Directories by creation date using linq

Chrissie1 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:16:17 GMT

I
think this is kinda neat ;-)



No more writting of compareto's or equals just use linq.





Dim _Directories() As String Dim _Directory As String Dim _DirectoryInfos As New List(Of
DirectoryInfo)



_Directories = Directory.GetDirectories("c:/")

For Each _Directory In _Directories

Dim directoryinfo As System.IO.DirectoryInfo = New System.IO.DirectoryInfo(_Directory)

_DirectoryInfos.Add(directoryinfo)

Next '
Run LINQ Query Dim _DirectoryInfosOrderedByCreationTime = From
DirectoryInfos In _DirectoryInfos
_

Order By DirectoryInfos.CreationTime Descending _

Select DirectoryInfos



'
Display results of query If _DirectoryInfosOrderedByCreationTime.Count >
0 Then For Each DirectoryInfo In _DirectoryInfosOrderedByCreationTime

TextBox1.AppendText("Directory:
" & DirectoryInfo.FullName & "
Date: " & DirectoryInfo.CreationTime & ControlChars.CrLf)

Next End If