duncanMgunn.com - ASP.NET

ASP.NET Membership provider - certified works on my machine

Your DisplayName here! — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:30:21 GMT

If you ever get into the situation where you've set up Roles, Users etc. on a machine and then script the database over to another machine, and suddenly the users can't login or aren't in the roles they should be - make sure you have specified the applicationName property in BOTH the membershipProvider and roleProvider sections in the web.config.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/22/Always-set-the-_2200_applicationName_2200_-property-when-configuring-ASP.NET-2.0-Membership-and-other-Providers.aspx

Building a RESTful service in WCF

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:11:44 GMT

This article presumes that you know the backgrounds to REST and WCF, and provides a practical example of creating a RESTful Web Service - without the help of the REST Starter Kit.

Step 1 - Create your Web Service Library

Good practice is to separate the actual service code from the service definition. I do this by creating two projects - a ServiceLibrary and the Service itself. I always start by creating the Library.

Create a Plain Old new C# Library.

Create your IService interface, like so:

[ServiceContract] public interface IService1
{ [OperationContract] string GetData(int value);
[OperationContract] TestObject GetDataUsingDataContract(TestObject composite); [WebInvoke(UriTemplate="/users",
Method="POST")]
[OperationContract] void Submit(TestObject
eval); [OperationContract] [WebGet(UriTemplate="*")] string Test();
[OperationContract] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "test2")] string Test2();
[OperationContract] [WebGet(UriTemplate="users")]
List<TestObject> Get(); [OperationContract] [WebGet(UriTemplate = "users/{userid}")]
TestObject GetUser(string userid);
[OperationContract] void Remove(string id); //
TODO: Add your service operations here } //
Use a data contract as illustrated in the sample below to add composite types to service
operations [DataContract(Name="testobject",
Namespace = "")] public class TestObject
{ [DataMember] public string Id
{ get; set; } bool boolValue = true; string stringValue = "Hello
"; [DataMember] public bool BoolValue
{ get { return boolValue;
} set { boolValue = value;
} } [DataMember] public string StringValue
{ get { return stringValue;
} set { stringValue = value;
} } public TestObject()
{ } public TestObject(string id, string val)
{ Id = id;
StringValue = val;
} }

I've also created my TestObject class here, which is the resource we will deal with in our service.

As you can see, IService1 looks like a bog standard WCF service definition

Now create your concrete implementation, as so:

[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single)]
[AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)] public class Service1
: IService1 { List<TestObject> objects = new List<TestObject>(); public Service1()
{ objects.Add(new TestObject("1", "Duncan"));
objects.Add(new TestObject("2", "Joe
Bloggs")); objects.Add(new TestObject("3", "Alice
Anderson")); } public string GetData(int value)
{ return string.Format("You
entered: {0}", value); } public string Test()
{ return "Hello
World!"; } public string Test2()
{ return "We
got some REST goin' on"; } public TestObject
GetDataUsingDataContract(TestObject composite) { if (composite.BoolValue)
{ composite.StringValue += "Suffix";
} return composite;
} public void Submit(TestObject
eval) { eval.Id = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
objects.Add(eval); } public List<TestObject>
Get() { return objects;
} public TestObject
GetUser(string userid)
{ return objects.Find(e
=> e.Id.Equals(userid)); } public void Remove(string id)
{ objects.Remove(objects.Find(e => e.Id.Equals(id))); } }

What I've done here is create my service as a single instance, by using the InstanceContextMode parameter in the ServiceBehaviour attribute. This means that we can keep an in-memory list of objects which will be preserved between calls to the service.

Step 2 - Create your Service

Okay, so that is the inner workings of the service created. But all we have is now a .NET assembly - it's still not a WCF service.

Create your service by adding a new project and selecting WCF Service Application, like below:

Call it RESTService.

Delete everything except RESTService.svc - including the .cs files under RESTService.svc.

Add a project reference to the REST Service Library project you created in Step 1.

Edit the markup of RESTService.svc so that it looks like the following:

<%@
ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="RESTWCFLibrary.Service1" Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebServiceHostFactory" %>

Step 3 - Install into IIS and edit the bindings

Now the fiddly bit.

Edit the web.config so that your bindings look like (most important things to note are in red) :

<system.serviceModel>
      <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" />
      <behaviors>
        <endpointBehaviors>
          <behavior name="RESTServiceBehavior">
            <webHttp />
          </behavior>
        </endpointBehaviors>
      </behaviors>
      <services>
        <service name="RESTWCFLibrary.Service1">
          <endpoint name="default" address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="RESTWCFLibrary.IService1"/>
          <endpoint name="RESTEndpoint" address="REST" behaviorConfiguration="RESTServiceBehavior"
                  binding="webHttpBinding"
                  contract="RESTWCFLibrary.IService1">
          </endpoint>
        </service>
      </services>
      <bindings />
      <client />
    </system.serviceModel>

REST WCF services will only work under the webHttp binding. By adding a new endpoint under the "REST" address, your service will be available (for REST calls) under RestServiceName/REST/[resources here...]

Installing under IIS is easy. Create a new website/vdir and point the physical path to the directory that hosts your .svc file. And that's it - hosted!

Step 4 - Testing - GETs and POSTs

Now to test your service. Open a browser and enter a URL similar to the following:

http://localhost/restWCFSite/RESTservice.svc/rest

If you implemented your ServiceContract as above, this will hit the default method on the Service - which is the method Test. You should see an XML packet returned with "Hello World!" as the string.

Entering the following

http://localhost/restWCFSite/RESTservice.svc/rest/users

will list all the users in the 'database' and

http://localhost/restWCFSite/RESTservice.svc/rest/users/1

will query that user by id - returning only that specified user.

To add data, you'll need to use Fiddler and construct the POST request yourself.

To do this, open up Fiddler, go to the Request Builder tab, and enter the following:

Note that the attributes MUST be in upper-case, if you put <stringvalue> instead of <StringValue> then it will not be able to parse these into the correct fields of the testobject class.

Execute this request.

If you go back to your previous GET and list the users, you should see your new user appear in the list.

That's it - your first REST service.

Use FoxyProxy to watch HTTP traffic in Fiddler via FireFox

Your DisplayName here! — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:10:04 GMT

Right this way - http://codezest.com/archive/2008/09/06/fiddler-firefox-local-web-site-testing-easily-foxyproxy.aspx

Using Fiddler with Firefox for Local Web site Testing Easily with FoxyProxy

Technorati Tags: FireFox,Tools

Fiddler is one of the best tools to analyze web requests sent from a web site and much more. Normally, using Fiddler with FireFox is a huge pain and typically does not work well out of the box when testing localhost requests or any requests for that matter with Fiddler through Firefox. But by using FoxyProxy which is just a nice plug-in to FireFox, it allows you to setup different proxies in FireFox very easily, and you can then hook into Fiddler's proxy quickly, and start to catch requests over the wire when testing local web applications.

Here is how to set up FoxyProxy for Fiddler and FireFox:

1. If you have not already installed Fiddler or Firefox, install these first.

2. Download & install the FoxyProxy plug-in for FireFox.

3. Now you will need to get to the FoxyProxy options. In FireFox, at the right-hand corner you should see FoxyProxy running:

Here it's just saying that FoxyProxy is not using any proxies at the moment.

Now right click that bar and choose "Options".

4. Now click the "Add New Proxy" button. We are going to create a new proxy instance in FoxyProxy that simply points to Fiddler's proxy BowserPAC.js config file.

5. First though we need to create a new pattern for this proxy instance and base it on a localhost wildcard so that any site that you run on localhost will be also caught when this FoxyProxy instance is running later on.

So click the Patterns Tab then Add New Pattern button, then input the following:

Pattern Name: localhost

URL Pattern: *localhost*

and then leave the default "Whitelist" and "Wildcards" options as is

6. Now click on the Proxy Details tab and select Automatic Proxy Configuration. Here is where we are going to browse to Fiddler's proxy config file.

a) In Windows XP, Browse and select the fiddler proxy config file located at the path

file:///c:/documents and settings/YOURNAMEHERE/my documents/Fiddler2/scripts/browserpac.js

b) Enable only the Notification about proxy auto-configuration file loads

7. Next, click on the General tab and fill in the following to define a name for this Proxy instance:

Proxy Name: Fiddler

Enabled: checked

Animate icons when this proxy is in use (optional): checked

Include this proxy: checked

You've just created a proxy instance for Fiddler inside FoxyProxy.

8. Finally click OK and go back to the "Global Settings" tab then just change the "Statusbar Activation" left-click option to "Cycles through

modes"

9. Now we are ready to actually use this proxy instance that we have defined in FoxyProxy.

So in Firefox, look at the right-hand corner and click once on . That's FoxyProxy running in FireFox.

Now click on it once.

Notice it will change from being disabled to the pattern status .

Now we need to tell FoxyProxy which proxy instance (that we just defined in options) to start using.

To do this, right-click the patterns box and choose the proxy instance you created. So select "Use proxy Fiddler for all URLs":

10. FoxyProxy has now been configured for Fiddler as the proxy, and selected as the instance inside FireFox and it's now running the Fiddler proxy.

Now we can use fiddler to capture any requests made from FireFox on any website with no problem.

You should now be seeing results in Fiddler (example shown below) after you click around on your localhost site.

Here's how mine looks now that fiddler is capturing any clicks made on my ASP.NET localhost web site :

And now we are all set. As you can see above in my example, now you can inspect a ton of things on any requests captured in Fiddler.

Redirecting https to http automatically

Your DisplayName here! — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:36:49 GMT

If your site is available under both http and https (i.e. if you put the certificate at the ROOT level of the site for whatever reason) then be aware that Google will index this site under both protocols. From what I can see a fair amount of SEOs think that this will impose the duplicate content penalty, although personally I can't see it affecting your ranking too much.

The main thing you have to worry about is what happens when the user requests your page under https. In IE, by default they may receive the "secure and non-secure content" warning, if there are any resources being requested explicitly over http. The other is that the site will run slower, and resources won't be cached.

There are a number of solutions to this problem, and if you don't want to move your site certificate about then you can always use an ISAPI filter to intercept the requests and redirect them at IIS level.

We found IIRF, available at http://iirf.codeplex.com/ which worked straight out the box. Note: Although it claims to have an install you will have to do this manually, but it's really straightforward and the help is comprehensive.

In order to do the redirect above, put the following into your .ini file (which you place in the root of the site) :

#
Iirf.ini # # ini file for IIRF
# RewriteLogLevel 1 RewriteLog F:\Inetpub\wwwroot\website\IIRF RewriteEngine ON StatusInquiry
ON IterationLimit 5 RedirectRule ^/secure/(.*) https://mysite.co.uk/secure/$1
[R=301] RewriteCond %{HTTPS}
on RedirectRule ^/(.*)$
http://mysite.co.uk/$1
[R=301]

Check the help file for instructions on this language.

Detecting Mobile Browsers for free

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:02:09 GMT

There are a few subscription-only services that allow you to check for mobile browsers so that you can service optimized content, but you can also download this free file from CodePlex which claims to do the same.

I haven't tried it yet, but might be worth a look: http://mdbf.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Getting%20Started&referringTitle=Home

Get the Raw SOAP Request and Response on a Web Service call

Your DisplayName here! — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:20:01 GMT

To get this, you could use an HTTP sniffing tool like Fiddler or HTTPFox, but there may be times that you have problems with this due to proxies etc being used in the company.

Thankfully there's a way to output the trace using the code below:

<system.diagnostics>


<trace autoflush="true"/>


<sources>


  <source name="System.Net" maxdatasize="1024">


    <listeners>


      <add name="TraceFile"/>


    </listeners>


  </source>


  <source name="System.Net.Sockets" maxdatasize="1024">


    <listeners>


      <add name="TraceFile"/>


    </listeners>


  </source>


</sources>


<sharedListeners>


  <add name="TraceFile" type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener" initializeData="trace.log"/>


</sharedListeners>


<switches>


  <add name="System.Net" value="Verbose"/>


  <add name="System.Net.Sockets" value="Verbose"/>


</switches>

</system.diagnostics>

Acknowledgements to the following post:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/300674/getting-raw-soap-data-from-a-web-reference-client-running-in-aspnet

Disable ViewState - but it's still there

Your DisplayName here! — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:20:44 GMT

I tend to use ViewState in most of my web applications, but when it comes to web sites there's rarely a need for them across all pages. In fact for some sites it can be switched off altogether.

However, even setting this in the web.config as so

<pages enableSessionState="false" enableViewState="false">

when you View Source there's still a __VIEWSTATE hidden input field.

Expected behaviour - as documented here.

Using javascript escape and ASP.NET Literal controls

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:14:48 GMT

If we need to set an ASP.NET Literal with escaped HTML encoded via javascript's escape() method, we need to use Server.UrlDecode rather than Server.HtmlDecode.

Something works in IE but not in FF?? Must be a mistake!

Your DisplayName here! — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:39:18 GMT

And yes it was.

Turns out I was adding a style in my code-behind, like this:

spanImage.Style.Add("background", "url(" + imagesFolder + imgFileName + ")" + " no-repeat;");

The HTML in front, the span already had the background property set.

In IE, the browser happily interprets this as a last-one-in-wins, as so:

<span id="Template_ctl25_contentImageRight_spanImage" class="frame-video float-left" style="background-image:url(_includes/images/content/pictures/pic1.jpg);background:url(/RFL2010/images/about.jpg) no-repeat;;">

whereas FF 'chokes' (correctly?) and disregards the invalid second attempt to set the background.

There will be a genuine technical explanation for this, if anyone knows then feel free to leave a comment!

ASP.NET Paths

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:34:00 GMT

See http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/269.aspx Request Property Function and Example ApplicationPath Returns the a Web server relative path to your application root /WestwindWebStore/ PhysicalApplicationPath Returns a local file system path to your application root D:\inetpub\wwwroot\WestWindWebStore\ PhysicalPath Returns the full file system path to the currently executing script D:\inetpub\wwwroot\WestWindWebStore\Item.aspx CurrentExecutionFilePath FilePath Path In most situations all of these return the virtual path to the currently executing script relative to the Web Server root. /WestwindWebStore/item.aspx PathInfo Returns any extra path following the script name. Rarely used – this value is usually blank. /WestwindWebStore/item.aspx/ExtraPathInfo RawUrl Returns the application relative URL including querystring or pathinfo /WestwindWebStore/item.aspx?sku=WWHELP30 Url Returns the fully qualified URL including domain and protocol http://www.west-wind.com/Webstore/item.aspx?sku=WWHELP30 Page.TemplateSourceDirectory Control.TemplateSourceDirectory Returns the virtual path of the currently executing control (or page). Very useful if you need to know the location of your ASCX control instead of the location of the page. /WestwindWebStore/admin It's also advised to replace any "//" to "/", so that sites will work as virtual directories under Default Web Site, and also straight off a direct web site. string imagesFolder = HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath + "images/"; imagesFolder = imagesFolder.Replace("//", "/");

button and input type=button

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:33:52 GMT

Came a cropper with this today. Wired up a $.ajax() event to my [button] thinking that all should be well.

Couldn't understand why the ajax call was terminating BEFORE the code on the server side was being called, even though the server side code was actually being called!

Should have known this, but [button] behaves as a Submit button under all browsers except IE, if you don't mark the "type" attribute.

See http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_button.asp for more info

SOP, SSL, JSONP

Your DisplayName here! — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:09:17 GMT

Some quick notes on some recent research.

Specify pages which should redirect from http to https programatically, which can help out in a test/staging environment:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/web-security/WebPageSecurity_v2.aspx

http://weblogs.asp.net/pwilson/archive/2004/12/23/331455.aspx

Cross-Domain Scripting, IFrames, SOP (Single Origin Policy) and JSONP

http://remysharp.com/2007/10/08/what-is-jsonp/

http://www.zackgrossbart.com/hackito/jsonp-sop/

http://sazbean.com/2009/02/11/json_and_the_argonauts/

http://softwareas.com/cross-domain-communication-with-iframes

Embedding a script from another domain into your page (example GoogleAnalytics):

<script
type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" ==
document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl
" : "http://www
"); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript
src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js'
type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script>

Multi-threading in ASP.NET Applications

Your DisplayName here! — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:40:04 GMT

Not a nice and easy topic for Saturday breakfast, I'll agree.

We've been looking at improving the responsiveness and throughput of our web application. There is a significant amount of processing and database I/O done on the application-layer, in a COM+ Server. You can see where this is going, I'm sure.

I won't go in to the technical details, but suffice to say the logical step is to make use of Asynchronous pages in ASP.NET. This article explains what we needed to do to make this happen, in addition to using custom threads (rather than threads straight out of the thread pool!) so that we maintain a high-level of throughput. This was in ASP.NET 1.x.

These more recent articles (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163463.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163725.aspx) quickly outlines the new technique.

It's important to remember that this is only a step in the right direction, we need to make sure that the back-end engine itself is all tickety-boo.

Stress Testing

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:30:04 GMT

I've been recently putting the search engine project through it's paces. I know that searching for Type A entities return in ~50ms (nice) but Type B entities return in ~1-2 seconds (ouch). Having said that, I know why - the database query for Type B is horrendous at the moment. The schema is changing drastically anyway so no point in putting that effort in now.

So I ran it via WAST and got some pretty decent results back. While it does the job, there are obviously better tools out there. And some of these can be expensive.

I've had a go of WAPT and been really impressed. The trial version only allows 20 concurrent users, but you can do all sorts of things such as ramp up over time, specify random delays between 'clicks' and so on. While my application is primarily AJAX, these are just treated as your run-of-the-mill HTTP requests.

At the end of it all I get a neat report, including interactive charts, which let me see when it reaches the maximum amount of throughput before it starts to decline.

With just Type A entities, it just keeps those pages coming. With Type B entities...well, we know we have to improve!

D is for 'doh'!

Your DisplayName here! — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:30:27 GMT

I must have spent the best half of a day tearing my hair out at this.

All information here - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/739859/returning-html-from-json-webservice-what-is-the-d

Adding custom action column to ASP.NET datagrids

Your DisplayName here! — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:52:33 GMT

Not rocket science, just put here for my own future reference.

We want to add User Actions to each row of a datagrid. Using the DevExpress ASPxGridView control, we create a DataColumn and then add a DataItemTemplate to this.

In the code in-front, add the following reference to code-behind:

In the code-behind, the MakeActions method should look something like th

        public string MakeActions(object dataItem)
        {             StringBuilder
sb = new StringBuilder();
            int id = Convert.ToInt32(DataBinder.Eval(dataItem, "ID").ToString());
            sb.Append("<a
href=\"" + "Details.aspx?id=" + id.ToString() + "\"><img
border=0 alt='Open Record' src='Images/folder_go.png'></a>");             return sb.ToString();
        }

where DataItem is the bound data object of that row. Clicking on this item will therefore link to the Details.aspx page, passing through the id on the querystring.

Intercepting WebForm_OnSubmit

Your DisplayName here! — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:43:05 GMT

If you want to run some script before or after client validation has been performed, you'll need to redirect the WebForm_OnSubmit() function. Because of the framework we are using, WebForm_OnSubmit() was returning false immediately, so adding anything to Page.ClientScript.RegisterOnSubmitStatement was never being run.

I didn't have time to sort out where in the framework this was being set up (never mind the impact analysis), so I re-directed the Submit of the form to call my function first, then called the WebForm_OnSubmit code as normal.

if (!Page.ClientScript.IsClientScriptBlockRegistered(submitRedirect))
{ StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append("<script>");
sb.AppendFormat("var
oldSubmit = document.getElementById('Form1').onsubmit;"); sb.Append("function
mySubmit()"); sb.Append("{"); //Your
code here sb.Append("return
oldSubmit();"); sb.Append("}");
sb.Append("document.getElementById('Form1').onsubmit
= mySubmit;"); sb.Append("</script>");
Page.ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(GetType(), submitRedirect, sb.ToString());
}

Thanks to http://forums.asp.net/p/1011848/1354154.aspx for this tip.

Windows Vista/Visual Studio 2008 debug problem

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:31:53 GMT

I was debugging on a colleague's Vista box the other day, and all of a sudden it kicked me out, resetting back into Visual Studio.

I remembered seeing a blog about this issue a while ago, and thankfully was able to find it again, so here it is in case you have encountered the same problem:

http://eamon.nerbonne.org/2007/11/visual-studio-2005-on-vista-timeouts.html