Blue Fenix

I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to remove "import data..." and "export data..." from this particular flavor of the worst front end to an otherwise badass rdbms. I shouldn't have to fight with a program to get my databases in order. What a joke.

I recently ran into a neat little nugget of functionality in C# with events. Normally in C# when we define events we stop at something like this:

public event EventHandler<MyEventArgs> MyEvent;

The thing is, you can explicitly implement the add and remove accessors if you throw some curly braces into the mix. Why does this matter? Imagine that you have a MainForm, and a usercontrol named ControlPanel. ControlPanel contains another usercontrol called hiddenControl that exposes an event that you want to handle in MainForm, but all MainForm has access to is ControlPanel...

public event EventHandler<MyEventArgs> MyEvent{
	add{
		this.hiddenControl.MyEvent += value;
	}
	remove{
		this.hiddenControl.MyEvent -= value;
	}
}

Now you can subscribe to the event in MainForm without making the usercontrol member public in ControlPanel.

[ Currently Playing : Burn Away - Foo Fighters - One by One (4:57) ]

Rather surprised by the new 'updates are ready' message from Microsoft. Hmmm.

Perhaps they know just how much frustration we had on the home pc recently due to their dodgy updates.

(Fixed thanks to Scott Swigart)

Source: Windows Updates Make Me Nervous

I read this excellent post from ScottGu and decided to use it with a page that implemented a masterpage. I didn't have to use postbacks in my scenario, but there were links included from the masterpage. The problem is that if you use app-relative paths for your href attributes (ex: <a href="/default.aspx">) the browser (FF 2.0.0.2 and IE 7 anyways) interperets the url with pathinfo differently than a url without. The base url includes the original page (ex: http://localhost:3333/rewriter.aspx/default.aspx). Guess what? The webserver picks up the last .aspx extension, default.aspx, that bad boy doesn't exist, and you get a 404 instead of going to http://localhost:3333/default.aspx.

In the comments, Ian Oxley suggested that you can re-base links in your page/css/other static files using the <base> element in the head of your page. I expanded on it a little, since this behavior is only on one page of my site currently, and added the following code into the Page_Load event of the offending page:

this.Header.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl("<base href=\"" + Request.Url.ToString().Replace(Request.RawUrl, "").Replace(Request.PathInfo, "") + "\">"));

Now the base tag works on both the live site and the one that WebDev.WebServer spins up as well.

[ Currently Playing : Them Bones - Alice in Chains - Nothing Safe: Best of the Box (2:29) ]

So I've been able to dig my teeth into some asp.net hacking recently, and I've been wrestling with learning to use SubSonic in the process.

In dealing with the scaffold control I ran into a funny issue: none of the exposed properties on the scaffold control will output any style info of the GridView that the control uses (that I could figure out anyways). I ended up with black text on a black background. :/ Seeing as I have the source, I decided to give the scaffold control's GridView a little class...hello GridViewCssClass property! I set it up just like the EditTable*CssClass properties, just a string property, with similar attributes to the other properties hanging around there:

[Bindable(true)]
[Category("Display")]
[Description("Sets the CSS class used by the gridview.")]
[DefaultValue(ScaffoldCSS.WRAPPER)] //CDF: just to have something to start with.
public string GridViewCssClass {
	get { return _gridViewCssClass; }
	set { _gridViewCssClass = value; }
}

Then, in the CreateGrid method make it actually do something:

        private void CreateGrid()
        {
            Label lblTitle = new Label();
            surroundingPanel.Controls.Add(lblTitle);
            lblTitle.Text = "<h2>" + schema.Name + " Admin</h2>";

            grid.ID = "grid";
	    grid.CssClass = this.GridViewCssClass;

            surroundingPanel.Controls.Add(grid);

            if (!Page.IsPostBack)
            {
                BindGrid(String.Empty);
            }
            //add a column to the grid for editing
        }

And now I can declaratively set the CssClass that the GridView uses to, oh, say, .whitetext :)

It looks pretty neat. I really dig the "type inside the preview" Web Layout. That's just sweet. The plugin support looks promising...I've already started coding up a CodeHTMLer plugin for syntax highlighting ala PostXING, now if I can get one going that will allow me to post the same content to more than one blog I'll be in business. I've been on a little hacking-hiatus on PostXING for the past few months to spend the summertime with my son Ethan, so what a great way to stretch my geek muscle all over again at the end of summer!

Exactly what I was looking for...I don't know a lot about reflection, so I wonder if there is a more elegant way to get this info.

As an extra added bonus, Rick Ross opened up for Ghostface. He only did like 5 tracks, but was spot on for Hustlin'. He's obviously very comfortable with the song by now and it shows in his performance. Looked like he was really having fun with it which always helps for a good show.

[ Currently Playing : Smiley faces - Gnarls Barkley - (3:05) ]

Close enough. This should be fun.