Rick Strahl's Web Log

Weblog Posts in December 2007

DataContractJsonSerializer in .NET 3.5
December 29, 2007 @ 9:01 am

.NET 3.5 includes a new DataContractJsonSerializer that makes it real easy for serializing and deserializing .NET objects to and from JSON. This post shows code for simple serialization and deserialization as well as discussion of some of the features and limitations.

30 comments

ClientScriptProxy and JavaScript Linking In Headers
December 27, 2007 @ 7:46 pm

.NET 3.5 includes a new DataContractJsonSerializer that makes it real easy for serializing and deserializing .NET objects to and from JSON. This post shows code for simple serialization and deserialization as well as discussion of some of the features and limitations.

3 comments

A number of annoying Visual Studio 2008 ASP.NET realated Bugs
December 26, 2007 @ 1:59 am

I'm pretty happy with running VS 2008, especially since I've retrofitted my laptop with 4gig. But there are also a number of annoying bugs that occur rather frequently. This is especially frustrating because I pointed out a number of these during beta and they didn't get addressed. Let's see which...

25 comments

JSON and Date Embedding
December 24, 2007 @ 7:35 am

I'm a bit mystified by various JSON implementations out there that don't seem to be dealing with dates correctly. I've been using Douglas Crockford's JSON implementation from JSON.org and originally I had to fix up the date processing so that it would work on both ends for serializing and...

12 comments

Charset Encoding in ASP.NET Response
December 23, 2007 @ 12:28 am

I was reviewing some control and handler code in my wwHoverPanel control's AJAX callback handler code. There are a number of routines that generate JavaScript output from JSON to returning resources and I noticed that the content type headers would often vary slightly. When returning a content type...

1 comment

Updated jQuery Calendar to jQuery DatePicker
December 21, 2007 @ 3:14 pm

A couple of months ago I posted an ASP.NET wrapper around Marc Garbanski's Calendar control. Just so was my luck that a couple of weeks after I created the control Marc rev'd the jQuery control, renamed it and basically overhauled the control for it's inclusion as part of the jQuery UI suite....

25 comments

<see> Tags in XML Comments in C#
December 20, 2007 @ 11:52 pm

I'm fixing few issues in Help Builder related to HTML comments and how they are imported into Help Builder. While I'm working with this I'm checking things in VB and C# and I have to say that VB manages embedded <see> tags a heck of a lot nicer than C#. .In VB what happens as you type a...

Updated ASP.NET wwCaptcha Control on the WebLog
December 20, 2007 @ 12:59 am

Sat down yesterday to create a quick imageless Captcha control that is self contained in a single page using simple Math expressions instead of images to handle page validation to avoid the multiple hit and Cache hit transferring information between the page and an HTTP module.

7 comments

More Memory and a New Machine - up and running
December 18, 2007 @ 4:28 am

Over the last couple of days I finally had some time to put together my new server test machine. I recently bought a new motherboard, CPU, memory and finally got around to just swapping out Mobo's on my secondary server box. The performance difference on this machine is staggering - running a dual...

14 comments

WCF Clients and COM Interop
December 16, 2007 @ 4:42 pm

One thing that may not be real obvious when moving WCF client code from say Web Service References is that the Web Service clients generated for WCF are not easily accessible via COM Interop. With ASMX services the proxy classes generated used to marshal fine over COM and so it was possible to...

Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET 3.0 - CTP forever?
December 15, 2007 @ 2:22 am

I've been working on a project with WCF in Visual Studio 2008 and it of course includes all the tools for .NET 3.0 for setting up WCF services and Service References as well as WPF support. It works great. Unfortunately my customers are not running VS 2008 yet and they are - justifiably so - weary...

4 comments

ClientBase<T> and a Common Base Class
December 14, 2007 @ 6:33 am

I've been racking my head over a 'generic' problem in relation to a WCF Web service client. I have an component that acts as a Web Service wrapper to proxy calls between a non-.NET client and a WCF Web Service client. The calls are working fine, but we have a rather large number of services that...

5 comments

Generated Date Types in WCF and unexpected 'dateSpecified' fields
December 13, 2007 @ 12:32 pm

I just ran into a little issue with a Web Service imported through the WCF Service Utility. The issue revolves around dates imported for a service. In the WSDL the layout looks like this: <xsd:complexType name="NewEnrolment"> <xsd:sequence> ...

4 comments

2.5 gigs worth of Windows Error Reports
December 12, 2007 @ 1:38 pm

This morning I was greeted to an especially unresponsive machine. The hard disk was thrashing away and I was pretty much not getting a usable machine for about 10-15 minutes as even typing became too slow for the machine. While I was looking for the culprit of the sudden perf drop I was rummaging...

17 comments

Accepting invalid Certificates for WCF/Web Services/HttpWebRequest gets easier
December 12, 2007 @ 2:37 am

Looks like .NET 3.0/3.5 has updated functionality to allow setting certificate certificate polices. In fact I noticed that the old mechanism I showed in an earlier post has been marked as obsolete, but there's a nicer replacement mechanism available now. I frequently use Certificate policy to...

1 comment

Mike Volodarsky posts a Breaking Change list in IIS 7
December 11, 2007 @ 12:05 am

Mike's posted a comprehensive and readable list of breaking changes in IIS 7 along with workaround for most of them. There are 25 issues posted and if you are using Vista or planning to go to IIS 7 when Windows Server 2008 is shipped early next year this is a good thing to keep an eye on. Most of...

2 comments

Tracing WCF Messages
December 09, 2007 @ 6:55 pm

I'm working on a small problem that involves connecting to a Web Service and using WS-Security and I'm using WCF. It's not going well and so I've been trying to trouble shoot exactly what's going on. WCF is pretty good about reporting error messages and generally pointing you in the right direction...

8 comments

Memory Fade
December 09, 2007 @ 2:48 am

A couple of weeks ago I ordered hardware to replace my CPU, motherboard and memory on an old server box I keep in my office for testing. At the time I was running Vista on the box and running Vista on this Pentium M 2.4 gig machine with 2 gig of RAM is absolutely unbearable. Amazing - I'm pretty...

11 comments

Charts for HTML
December 07, 2007 @ 5:03 pm

It must be my lucky day. Earlier today I decided I needed to replace some old graphics code based on a now defunct tool. As I was browsing through my feeds today I noticed two cool things that relate: Google Chart API Basic charting, but dirt simple - the way it should be. I replaced my three...

7 comments

LINQ To SQL and the Web.Config ConnectionString Value
December 07, 2007 @ 1:49 am

I just got had by an odd behavior in the LINQ to SQL model designer when working with a LINQ to SQL Model in a separate class library project. I use LINQ to SQL in a business layer which always lives in a separate assembly and so the model does not live in the same project as the Web (or other)...

12 comments

The long Path to getting an proper cased Path & Filename with Win32
December 06, 2007 @ 12:41 am

I'm working through a couple of small bugs in Help Builder today and one issue that's come up is that in some (but not all cases) file selections when inserting images and doing screen captures turn out in inaccurate casing. Images are embedded into the document typically as relative images and the...

VBScript.RegExp and the . Operator on multi-line Content
December 05, 2007 @ 1:09 am

Note to self: Remember that the COM RegEx parser doesn't deal with the . operator the same way in multi-line content as .NET or most other RegEx parsers do. I've just spent 20 minutes troubleshooting a RegEx expression that works just fine in RegEx Buddy and .NET code, but failed in one of my...

4 comments

A few Visual Studio 2008 Web Designer Issues
December 04, 2007 @ 2:12 am

I've been pretty pleased with the improvements in the Visual Studio Web designer. There are a lot of things that make life a lot easier including split view, fast mode switching between the designer and the markup editor and all of the CSS improvements that are accessible on both surfaces. However,...

25 comments

Delay Loading a DLL with a Linker Switch in Visual Studio
December 02, 2007 @ 1:03 am

I've been updating a bunch of Win32 code in a utility library for Web Connection today when I ran into a realization that I had by accident introduced a dependency to the .NET framework into this non .NET application/tool. Some time ago I added a library that optionally provides the ability to call...

4 comments