There is an open source project to use with your projects. It's easy to use.

dotnetzip.codeplex.com

Let's zip a folder :)

Happy coding...

You can always write comment to your codes. But comment itself can be outdated and misleads a developer. So writing self-documented codes must our first aim to make our code more maintainable.

In my opinion a big step to achieve self-documented code begins writing if clauses.

If a developer understands if clause, he/she understand purpose of the code block more easily.

But how can we write more readable if clause.

Very easy: Don't write logical comparisons into if clause.

Although this is a very simple if clause it's a bit hard to get what is happening there. Let's make it more readable.

Happy coding...

If you're working with lot of projects, or you want to release your DLL to specific location you may need to add some extra actions to to your build.

For example. You have project that uses a DLL of another project of another solution. Sometimes you build your DLL in debug mode, sometimes you build your DLL in release mode. When you build your class library output directory depends on the build mode. Question is: Which DLL will be referenced by your project? To prevent this confusion you can add an copy operation to your post-build events. Then reference the copied DLL.

Here is the sample macro to do this:

cd $(OutDir)
copy $(TargetFileName) D:\Sources\DLLReferences\MyProjectOutpu

Just go to your project properties. Switch "Build Events" tab. Add this sample macro to Post-build event command line. When you build your it will copy result file to specified location.

Figure 1: Build events window of your project.

Figure 2: A Build event Command line window

You can find a list of macros and their descriptions here:

$(ConfigurationName)

The name of the current project configuration, for example, "Debug|Any CPU".

$(OutDir)

Path to the output file directory, relative to the project directory. This resolves to the value for the Output Directory property. It includes the trailing backslash '\'.

$(DevEnvDir)

The installation directory of Visual Studio 2005 (defined with drive and path); includes the trailing backslash '\'.

$(PlatformName)

The name of the currently targeted platform. For example, "AnyCPU".

$(ProjectDir)

The directory of the project (defined with drive and path); includes the trailing backslash '\'.

$(ProjectPath)

The absolute path name of the project (defined with drive, path, base name, and file extension).

$(ProjectName)

The base name of the project.

$(ProjectFileName)

The file name of the project (defined with base name and file extension).

$(ProjectExt)

The file extension of the project. It includes the '.' before the file extension.

$(SolutionDir)

The directory of the solution (defined with drive and path); includes the trailing backslash '\'.

$(SolutionPath)

The absolute path name of the solution (defined with drive, path, base name, and file extension).

$(SolutionName)

The base name of the solution.

$(SolutionFileName)

The file name of the solution (defined with base name and file extension).

$(SolutionExt)

The file extension of the solution. It includes the '.' before the file extension.

$(TargetDir)

The directory of the primary output file for the build (defined with drive and path). It includes the trailing backslash '\'.

$(TargetPath)

The absolute path name of the primary output file for the build (defined with drive, path, base name, and file extension).

$(TargetName)

The base name of the primary output file for the build.

$(TargetFileName)

The file name of the primary output file for the build (defined as base name and file extension).

$(TargetExt)

The file extension of the primary output file for the build. It includes the '.' before the file extension.

Reference: Pre-build Event/Post-build Event Command Line Dialog Box

This is sample application to serializes sample object

Output string

Sample class to use

If you hava a javascript like this:

You will see firefox is not showing "some text" in the status bar. Too see your text you must enable it from "Advanced Javascript Settings" window.

Happy coding...

Here is a very handy extension method to remove white spaces from strings.

Adapted from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xwewhkd1.aspx

Happy coding.

When you are coding don't forget to use your brain. Always ask yourself. "Is there another way to do this?", "What am i doing here?". If you are copying someone else's code. Understand well purpose of the code.

Now you might ask "what the hell you are talking about?" Probably i will answer "Just angry to a mindless coder."

Look at the sample i choose for you and you will understand why i want to cry!

this is very bad written ASP.NET web application VB.NET code-behind code. Our genious programmer replacing id value with a new one and appending a javascript method call for onclick event. In that javascript call our programmer parses the control id with split and gets the id back and passes the Question id value to the javascript method. But forgets to "think" the value is already there and can be directly appended to the text.

And this is what i'm talking about:

I like this quote: "This machine has no brain, use your own!"

Happy coding...

All of the web applications that i am responsible to maintain have lots of stored procedures. And to many of them builds a SQL string and executes at the end of the procedure. Previous programmers wrote these SPs in that way because they don’t know how to handle comma separated ID values. For these cases a small table valued split function comes to help.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[Split]
(
  @delimited nvarchar(max),
  @delimiter nvarchar(100)
) RETURNS @t TABLE
(
  val nvarchar(max)
)
AS
BEGIN
  declare @xml xml
  set @xml = N'<root><r>' + replace(@delimited,@delimiter,'</r><r>') + '</r></root>'

  insert into @t(val)
  select
    r.value('.','varchar(5)') as item
  from @xml.nodes('//root/r') as records(r)

  RETURN
END

You can use this function to split array of ID with IN statement.

SELECT * FROM dbo.Split(N'a,b,c,d,e', ',')
SELECT * FROM dbo.Split('1,3,6,77,34,22', ',')
select * from Members where id in (SELECT Val as Id FROM dbo.Split('2707,2708', ','))

Happy coding…

My popular framework’s version 2 release candidate released.

More about:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/01/10/asp-net-mvc-2.aspx
http://haacked.com/archive/2009/12/16/aspnetmvc-2-rc.aspx

Microsoft announces beta versions of new products.

Can be download here: http://w ww.microsoft.com/2010