ASP : Using LiveHTTPHeaders to monitor what's being sent

Quite often, you need to see what a web site is sending from the ASP pages. You could use something like Ethereal but if you are a Firefox fan, an easy way is to use LiveHTTPHeaders.

You can get the LiveHTTPHeaders Firefox extension from here.

Then install it.

Click Firefox Tools / LiveHTTPHeaders.

If you want to limit the URL's that are monitored and you are a dab hand at regular expressions, then click Config tab / Filter URL's with regexp

Close the Config tab

From the Firefox menu, click Select View / Sidebar / LiveHTTPHeaders (or alternatively click Alt L)

Open a page from the website you wish to monitor. What is displayed is what is being sent to the server.

Enjoy!

Another reading list

Came across this reading list here.

This one comes from John Brewer.

Enjoy!

ASP : Getting configuration variables from web.config

Instead of hard-coding these in the .cs code, you could use the following:

string inputFile = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("FileLoc");

In the web.config, in the appSettings section, enter something like:

LSBadd key="FileLoc" value="C:\somewhere\File.xml" /RSB

where:

LSB = Left square bracket
RSB = Right square bracket

You can also do this from Visual Studio when viewing an .aspx page. Click Website / ASP.NET configuration and type in the entries there.

Enjoy!

ASP : Creating Javascript on the server side

Javascript is normally created in the HTML file but it can be created on the server side.

e.g. the script to open another window could be:

string exampleScript =
"LSBscript language='javascript'RSB\n" +
"window.open ('http://some url', '_blank', " +
"'scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=yes" +
",toolbar=no,menubar=yes,location=no" +
",width=screen.availWidth" +
",height=screen.availHeight" +
",screenX=0,screenY=0,top=0,left=0');\n" +
"LSB/scriptRSB";

ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(typeof(Page), "ExampleScript", exampleScript);

where:

LSB = Left square bracket
RSB = Right square bracket

Enjoy!

C# : Creating dates

The simplest way is to use:

string thisDate = "1990-01-01";
DateTime datetime = DateTime.Parse (thisDate);

Enjoy!

Recommended reading for developers

Another list from "Coding Horror" - programming and human factors by Jeff Atwood.

Blog here.

Reading list here.

Enjoy!

ASP : Deploying web site from Visual Studio 5

From the ASP solution,

File / Add / New Project / Setup and Deployment / Web Setup Project

Type in a name and enter "OK".

The entry will now be in "Solution Explorer". Right-click and select "Add / Project Output". Ensure "Content Files" is selected and click "OK".

Now we want to build it. Right-click again and select build. This will create the .msi file in the directory.

Enjoy!

SOAP : Asynchronous web service

Had to implement an asynchronous web service which did not need to be real-time so no response was needed.

Had me a bit puzzled until I realised that a web service can return void!

i.e. in ASP:

[WebMethod]
public void webMethod(Some parameter)

compiles and runs no problem.

So what does it return?

The WSDL shows:

s:element name="webMethodResponse"
s:complexType /
/s:element

So it actually returns null!

Enjoy!

Windows : Getting a file list

Often need to put a list of files into a Word document or some such.

One way is to activate the command prompt (DOS box), navigate to the required directory and type:

dir /ON /B > dir.txt

The /ON option lists the files in alphabetic order. Further options are:

/O List by files in sorted order.
sortorder N By name (alphabetic) S By size (smallest first)
E By extension (alphabetic) D By date/time (oldest first)
G Group directories first - Prefix to reverse order

The /B option uses a bare format (i.e. no heading information or summary).

The pipe option (>) sends the results to a file called dir.txt in the current directory.

From here, it can be cut & pasted into the Word document.

BTW, if you ever need to get information about a DOS command, type:

help "command"

e.g. help dir

Enjoy!

Unix : sum

Often transfer large files around using FTP or whatever e.g. ear and war files and it's useful to see if they were transferred without error.

sum is a useful utility to use for this.

It calculates and prints a 16-bit checksum for the named file and the number of 512-byte blocks in the file.

sum abcd.ear
05612 25680

Enjoy!

SOAP : WSCF - Web Services Contract First

"Contract first" involves creating the WSDL first and then using that to generate the code. There aren't many tools to do this.

Essentially, this approach involves modelling the messages, data and interfaces at the start and then publishing them as a contract before coding the implementation begins. Typically, modelling of the data and messages is done using a XML Schema (i.e. XSD files) and the contract is formalised using the Web Services Description Language (WSDL files).

thinktecture offer their free tool to do this which is nicely integrated with Visual Studio (2003 and 2005) and also allows a command line interface.

Get it from here.

Documentation and walk-through here.

Two MSDN articles which cover this are:

here and

here

Enjoy!

C# : Predefining an array

The classic way of creating an array is:

Document[] doc = new Document[2];
doc[0] = new Document();
doc[0].code = "ABC";
doc[1] = new Document();
doc[1].code = "DEF";

but a more elegant way is:

Document doc1 = new Document();
doc1.code = "ABC";
Document doc2 = new Document();
doc2.code = "DEF";
? = new Document[] {doc1, doc2};

Enjoy!