Recently, one of my friends asked me why I was a "Microsoft" coder instead of joining the open-source camps. I think that’s a great question, but it’s really two questions: how did I end up as a "Microsoft" coder, and (the more interesting question) why have I chosen to remain a "Microsoft" coder when there…
try-catch-FAIL
Stories from the trenches of software development.
Month: <span>October 2008</span>
Using Java APIs in .NET
Have you ever found a neat-looking API that would save you tons of time and pain, only to have your hopes crushed when you discover that the API is written in Java? Well, fret no more, because there’s a nice, easy way to leverage tasty Java APIs from within .NET: just compile them to IL…
Addressing Two ActiveRecord Annoyances
I still [less than three] ActiveRecord, but the honeymoon is definitely over. Over the past couple of days, I’ve run into a couple of issues that took some thinking to address. Neither is a deal-killer (not in my opinion, anyway), but they are problems that need to be solved. ActiveRecord persists changes without you telling…
Walking a tree with yield return and recursion
C# 2.0 introduced the "yield return" statement. While neat in theory, I actually never ran into a scenario where I needed it. I had heard all the rage about it, but to me, it was kinda like the 5th wheel on the cart of awesomeness that was C# 2.0. My opinion changed this morning when…
Castle ActiveRecord: Quite Possibly the Greatest Thing Ever
Well, maybe not, but it has quickly become my favorite tool for writing .NET applications. I’ve been using it to write the persistence layer for a brand-new enterprise application we’re building, and so far, it’s elegantly supported every single thing I’ve wanted to do. LINQ? Got it. Part-of relationships? Easy. Many-to-many? No sweat. Multiple data…
System.Diagnostics.Process class woes resolved!
The Process class is useful any time you need to spawn off a child process. Sometimes you don’t really need to couple the parent process too tightly with the child process, but other times you may need to directly tie in to the standard input/output and manipulate the child process. One of the recurring gripes…
Using Castle ActiveRecord with multiple databases
I <3 Castle ActiveRecord, but today I ran into something that I couldn’t quite figure out. The solution from the documentation was seemingly incorrect. After much trial-and-error though, I have it figured out, and it turns out the docs were right, and I was wrong. I’m documenting exactly what I did here in hopes that…
Creating a reusable GridTreeView with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery, take two
In my last post, I created a partial view page that rendered a collapsible gridview (which I now call a GridTreeView) using the MVCContrib Grid HtmlHelper extension and the jQuery ActsAsTreeTable plug-in. While the code works, there are a few drawbacks. First, I completely forgot about having to link the CSS file in to the…
Creating a reusable grid tree view with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery
I think it is a safe assumption that every web developer has had to display tabular data at one point or another. Tabular data is easy with ASP.NET: bind a GridView to a data source, and you’re all set. But with ASP.NET MVC, things are a little trickier. We don’t have access to all the…
Simplified web application packaging with MSBuild
In a previous post, I described some of the pain I’ve run into with using Web Deployment Projects. I have given up on that solution and have instead rolled my own. I’m happy to report that I now have a much better process (in my opinion), and one that didn’t require nearly as much beating…
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