http://bytecarrot.com/aspy/.

I short words it is the ASP.NET Session and Cache viewer in a form of ASP.NET HTTP handler.

Current, 1.1.0 version is not a big changes but contains a feature requested by people who have started to use Aspy in theirs projects. The biggest problem with previous release was in viewing large values. There is no possibility to display for instance big XML in a table cell so the value was always truncated. Right now hovering at value cell shows small magnifying glass which clicked shows popup window with whole value. In addition from now ByteCarrot.Aspy.dll is signed and has strong name so it can be used with other signed assemblies.

More information, download and installation instructions can be found on Aspy website mentioned above. Below I’ve added screenshots presenting new feature added in this new version.

I had such problem working on the last version of WebConsole. My solution is quite trivial and required a little bit of jQuery and CSS. I’ve solved the problem using as I call it “action menus”. These are context menu but activated by hovering mouse not right click. You can check how such “action menu” works in a screencast available below.

All three “action menus” presented in screencast above have the same HTML structure and use the same jQuery script. The look & feel has been totally customized in CSS so it is very useful and simple to use thing.

General structure of “action menu” and base CSS definition show two snippets below.

<div id="account-menu" class="action-menu">
    <span>Welcome <strong>Administrator</strong>!</span>
    <ul class="children">
        <li class="nowrap-text"><a href="#">Change Password</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">Sign Out</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

div.action-menu {
    position: relative;
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
}

div.action-menu * {
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
}

div.action-menu a {
    text-decoration: none;
}

div.action-menu ul {
    list-style: none;
    display: none;
    position: absolute;
    z-index: 9999;
}

jQuery executed to make “action menu” reacting to hover is also very simple and straightforward.

// Adds action menu
function addActionMenus() {
    $('div.action-menu').hover(
        function () {
            $(this).addClass('hover');
            $(this).find('ul').show();
        },
        function () {
            $(this).removeClass('hover');
            $(this).find('ul').hide();
        }
    );
}

jQuery(function () {
    addActionMenus();
});

As I mentioned before rest of customization is done in CSS. The demo from screencast contains all code presented above and customizations made for each menu presented there. I am sharing it with you with hope it will be useful. You can download it here.

Please, let me know what do you think about this type of hiding actions available only in a particular contexts and my simple implementation.

jQuery UI tabs with vertical navigation

HTML/Razor source code

@model ByteCarrot.WebConsole.Web.Controllers.Settings.SettingsViewModel</pre>
<div id="settings">
<ul>
	<li><a href="@Url.Action(MVC.Account.List())">Users</a></li>
	<li><a href="@Url.Action(MVC.Account.List())">Settings 1</a></li>
	<li><a href="@Url.Action(MVC.Account.List())">Settings 2</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
     $(function () {
         $("#settings").tabs();
     });
</script>

CSS source code

div#settings {
    position: relative;
    padding-left: 200px;
}

div#settings > div {
    min-height: 300px;
}

div#settings .ui-tabs-nav {
    position: absolute;
    left: 0px;
    top: 0px;
    bottom: 0px;
    width: 200px;
    padding: 5px 0px 5px 5px;
}

div#settings .ui-tabs-nav li {
    left: 0px;
    width: 195px;
    border-right: none;
    overflow: hidden;
    margin-bottom: 2px;
}

div#settings .ui-tabs-nav li a {
    float: right;
    width: 100%;
    text-align: right;
}

div#settings .ui-tabs-nav li.ui-tabs-selected {
    border: none;
    border-right: solid 1px #fff;
    background: none;
    background-color: #fff;
    width: 200px;
}

If you are fan of .less project here is the same CSS in LESS format:

div#settings
{
    position: relative;
    padding-left: 200px;

    > div
    {
        min-height: 300px;
    }

    .ui-tabs-nav
    {
        position: absolute;
        left: 0px;
        top: 0px;
        bottom: 0px;
        width: 200px;
        padding: 5px 0px 5px 5px;

        li
        {
            left:  0px;
            width: 195px;
            border-right: none;
            overflow: hidden;
            margin-bottom: 2px;

            a
            {
                float: right;
                width: 100%;
                text-align: right;
            }
        }

        li.ui-tabs-selected
        {
            border: none;
            border-right: solid 1px #fff;
            background: none;
            background-color: #fff;
            width: 200px;
        }
    }
}

I hope it will be useful.

In order to store information about HTTP communication I had to create NHibernate entities and map them to a database. After some short brainstorming I came up with three basic entities:

Activity – representing single “act” of communication between a client and a server

public class Activity : Entity
{
    // ... some properties and methods removed for readability

    public virtual int Id { get; set; }

    private Request _request;
    public virtual Request Request
    {
        get { return _request; }
    }

    public virtual void Add(Request request)
    {
        if (_request != null)
        {
            _request.Activity = null;
        }
        _request = request;
        _request.Activity = this;
    }

    private Response _response;
    public virtual Response Response
    {
        get { return _response; }
    }

    public virtual void Add(Response response)
    {
        if (_response != null)
        {
            _response.Activity = null;
        }
        _response = response;
        _response.Activity = this;
    }
}

Request – representing request made by the client

public class Request : Entity
{
    // ... some properties  and methods removed for readability

    public virtual int Id { get; set; }

    public virtual Activity Activity { get; set; }
}

Response – representing response from the server

public class Response : Entity
{
    // ... some properties  and methods removed for readability

    public virtual int Id { get; set; }

    public virtual Activity Activity { get; set; }
}

During one Activity there can be no more than one Request and Response. With this assumptions in mind I’ve started thinking how to map these relations using Fluent NHibernate. It was obvious for me that this are one to one relations, but turned out it is not so obvious how to map them. After some googling, playing with the code and a cup coffee I found right configuration which work nice.

From the Activity side relations has been mapped in a standard way by using HasOne method with some other modifiers for the access and lazy loading. One thing worth mention is Id mapping with automatically generated values.

public sealed class ActivityMap : ClassMap
{
    public ActivityMap()
    {
        // ... some mappings removed for readability

        Id(x => x.Id);

        HasOne(x => x.Request).Access.CamelCaseField(Prefix.Underscore)
                .Cascade.All().LazyLoad();

        HasOne(x => x.Response).Access.CamelCaseField(Prefix.Underscore)
                .Cascade.All().LazyLoad();
    }
}

From the Request and the Response mapping side thing looks quite different. This is because I had to “tell” that Id should not be automatically generated but taken from the Activity. Additionally HasOne relation looks different because it has to act as a foreign key and be constrained to values of the Activitie’s identifier (Id).

public sealed class RequestMap : ClassMap
{
    public RequestMap()
    {
        // ... some mappings removed for readability

        Id(x => x.Id).GeneratedBy.Foreign("Activity");

        HasOne(x => x.Activity).Constrained().ForeignKey();
    }
}

public sealed class ResponseMap : ClassMap
{
    public ResponseMap()
    {
        // ... some mappings removed for readability

        Id(x => x.Id).GeneratedBy.Foreign("Activity");

        HasOne(x => x.Activity).Constrained().ForeignKey();
    }
}

At the end we came up with a solution where the main entity is responsible for generating identifiers and all other entities in one to one relation use them as theirs primary and foreign keys.

[Test]
public void Add_WhenInvokedShouldAddNewExternalAudioFolder()
{
    Execute(test: () =>
    {
        var json = WebApiClient.ExternalAudioFolder.Add("My folder", "My description");
        var message = json.DeserializeJson<AddMessage>();

        Assert.That(message.Result, Is.EqualTo(Message.Success));
    },
    inContextOf: Account.Basic,
    cleanUpAfter: true);
}

What do you think about the code above? Do you have any additional ideas how to improve readability of this “execution context”?

Because I hate redundant work I have defined a Fluent NHibernate convention presented below.

using System;
using System.Linq;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions.AcceptanceCriteria;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions.Inspections;
using FluentNHibernate.Conventions.Instances;

namespace ExampleConventions
{
    public class EnumColumnLengthConvention
        : IPropertyConvention, IPropertyConventionAcceptance
    {
        public void Accept(IAcceptanceCriteria<IPropertyInspector> criteria)
        {
            criteria.Expect(x => x.Property.PropertyType.IsEnum)
                .Expect(x => x.Length == 0);
        }

        public void Apply(IPropertyInstance instance)
        {
            var names = Enum.GetNames(instance.Property.PropertyType);
            instance.Length(names.Max(name => name.Length));
        }
    }
}

The convention is really simple. Its whole logic can be found in Apply method and I think it is self explanatory so there is nothing to describe here.

igem update --system

produced output like this:

Updating RubyGems
Updating rubygems-update
Successfully installed rubygems-update-1.3.6
Updating RubyGems to 1.3.6
Installing RubyGems 1.3.6
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::Exception)
       [BUG] invalid exec_format "ir", no %s

After some research turned out that RubyGems assumes that Ruby executable contains “ruby” word in the name. In case of IronRuby the name is “ir.exe” so in my opinion this strange behavior can be treated as a bug in RubyGems. I hope it will be fixed in next release but before that will happen here are the steps to workaround the problem and update gems:

1. Create path: [IronRuby folder]\Lib\ruby\1.8\rubygems\defaults
2. Create file ironruby.rb and add it to the path from step 1
3. Open ironruby.rb and add code from the snippet below

module Gem
  def self.default_exec_format
    exec_format = ConfigMap[:ruby_install_name].sub('ruby', '%s') rescue '%s'
    #unless exec_format =~ /%s/ then
    #  raise Gem::Exception,
    #    "[BUG] invalid exec_format #{exec_format.inspect}, no %s"
    #end
    exec_format
  end
end

That is it. Now RubyGems will use new implementation of default_exec_format and everything should work as expected.

Hope this helps.

Because Ruby for Windows does not require any installation I am able to easily provide you the version I have build mostly in order to save your time and do not describe whole procedure I had to follow during compilation.

The package contains Ruby 1.8.7 for Windows with following gems:

• actionmailer (2.3.5)
• actionpack (2.3.5)
• activerecord (2.3.5)
• activeresource (2.3.5)
• activesupport (2.3.5)
• albacore (0.1.1, 0.1.0)
• columnize (0.3.1)
• linecache (0.43)
• net-sftp (2.0.4)
• net-ssh (2.0.19)
• rack (1.1.0, 1.0.1)
• rails (2.3.5)
• rake (0.8.7)
• RedCloth (4.2.2)
• ruby-debug (0.10.3)
• ruby-debug-base (0.10.3)
• ruby-debug-ide (0.4.9)
• rubyzip (0.9.4, 0.9.1)
• sqlite3-ruby (1.2.5)

Installation is very simple. Uncompress files to C:\Ruby directory and add C:\Ruby\bin path to PATH environment variable.

Download Ruby 1.8.7 for Windows with debug support

During last few days I was prototyping some of new features I would like to add to ByteCarrot application. One of them is new template engine which will replace current XSLT based solution. I wanted something with more friendly syntax, something easy to create, change and maintain. I took a look at many template engines available for .NET platform but none of them met my needs. I thought that it would be nice to have solution with scripting support and syntax similar to this available in default ASP.NET MVC view engine.

After digging I have found an ASP.NET MVC application prototype with view engine based on IronRuby. It was created by Phil Haack‘s team and its syntax was exactly the same as RHTML used in Ruby on Rails views. It turned out that this engine was exactly what I needed, so I have taken parts of the code and adapted it to my scenario. The result is amazing because now I have fully functional templates engine with support of dynamic language where I can handle every possible HTML generation scenario.

As an attachment to this post I have added the code created during prototyping. The code contains few classes where the most important is RhtmlEngine. It has very simple, self-expanatory interface and acts as an “entry point” for using mentioned templates engine. Below you can find two samples showing capabilities of my solution but if you want to take a look at the implementation and make your hands dirty feel free to download the code and play with it for yourself.

public class RhtmlEngine
{
    public Result Render(object model, string temlateFile, string targetFile)
        ...
    public Result Render(object model, StreamReader rhtml, StreamWriter writer)
        ...
}

Simple template

The templates engine requires three things to be able to generate HTML:

• Model representing the data which should be presented in form of HTML page,
• Template defining how model should be presented,
• Target where generated HTML page should be saved.

Listing below shows simple template generating a header and a list of hobbies. Notice that IronRuby blocks are embedded exactly the same as Visual Basic .NET or C# code is embedded in ASP.NET MVC views.

SimpleTemplate.rhtml

<html>
    <body>
        <h1>Hi! My name is: <%= model.FirstName %><%= model.LastName %></h2>
        I like:
        <ul>
        <% model.Hobbies.each do |hobby| %>
			<li><%= hobby %></li>
        <% end %>
        </ul>
    </body>
</html>

Template shown above can be used to generate an HTML representation of the following model:

var model = new SampleModel
{
    FirstName = "Marcin",
    LastName = "Obel",
    Hobbies = new List<string>
    {
        "yachting",
        "fishing",
        "cycling"
    }
};

As you can notice looking at listing below, because the templates engine is very simple, you need only one line to change the model into HTML page.

var result = new RhtmlEngine().Render(model, "SimpleTemplate.rhtml", "SimpleHtml.html");

In result (as shown below) the code above will produce clean HTML filled in with the data from model.

SimpleHtml.html

<html>
    <body>
        <h1>Hi! My name is: MarcinObel</h2>
        I like:
        <ul>
            <li>yachting</li>
            <li>fishing</li>
            <li>cycling</li>
        </ul>
    </body>
</html>

More advanced example

The example above does not show the most powerful part of this solution which is in fact inherited from IronRuby itself. Because templates are based on fully functional, dynamic language there is a possibility to extend basic features like loops and if statements (available in all templates engines) with things like functions, classes or even use some functionalities available in .NET Framework. Next example extends this one mentioned in previous section. In the listing below you can notice two new functions:

• encode - uses HttpUtility class from .NET Framework to encode HTML code
• render_li – renders an item of HTML list

AdvancedTemplate.rhtml

<%
require 'System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'
include System::Web

def encode(text)
    HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(text)
end

def render_li(text)
    writer.Write "<li>#{text}</li>";
end
%>

<html>
    <body>
        <h1>Hi! My name is: <%= model.FirstName %><%= model.LastName %></h2>
        I like:
        <ul>
        <% model.Hobbies.each do |hobby|
                 render_li hobby
             end %>
        </ul>
        <pre>
            <%= encode model.UglyJavaScript %>
        </pre>
    </body>
</html>

In order to present a usage of custom IronRuby function added to the template, below you can find extended model from previous example. Now the model contains additional property named UglyJavaScript containing JavaScript code which should be encoded before it can be presented in HTML.

var model = new SampleModel
{
    FirstName = "Marcin",
    LastName = "Obel",
    Hobbies = new List<string>
    {
        "yachting",
        "fishing",
        "cycling"
    },
    UglyJavaScript = @"<script type='text/javascript'>window.close();</script>"
};

var result = new RhtmlEngine().Render(model, "AdvancedTemplate.rhtml", "AdvancedHtml.html");

Like in previous example after passing the model and the template into engine we receive an HTML.  This time as you can see it contains JavaScript code from model encoded using .NET Framework functionality in order to be able to display it.

<html>
    <body>
        <h1>Hi! My name is: MarcinObel</h2>
        I like:
        <ul>
        <li>yachting</li><li>fishing</li><li>cycling</li>
        </ul>
        <pre>
        &lt;script type='text/javascript'&gt;window.close();&lt;/script&gt;
        </pre>
    </body>
</html>

Resources

• RHTML templates engine source code
• IronRuby official website
• Phil Haack’s blog

ColumnNullabilityConvention – says that if nullability for column has not been specified explicitly, should be set to “NOT NULL”.

public class ColumnNullabilityConvention
    : IPropertyConvention, IPropertyConventionAcceptance
{
    public void Accept(IAcceptanceCriteria<IPropertyInspector> criteria)
    {
        criteria.Expect(x => x.Nullable, Is.Not.Set);
    }

    public void Apply(IPropertyInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Not.Nullable();
    }
}

CreatedAtPropertyAccessConvention – says that every property named CreatedAt should be accessed through camel case field hidden behind it.

public class CreatedAtPropertyAccessConvention
    : IPropertyConvention, IPropertyConventionAcceptance
{
    public void Accept(IAcceptanceCriteria<IPropertyInspector> criteria)
    {
        criteria.Expect(x => x.Property.Name == "CreatedAt");
    }

    public void Apply(IPropertyInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Access.ReadOnlyPropertyThroughCamelCaseField(
            CamelCasePrefix.Underscore);
    }
}

ForeignKeyConstraintNameConvention – says that name of every foreign key constraint representing one to many relation should consist of names of entities for which it was specified.

public class ForeignKeyConstraintNameConvention
    : IHasManyConvention
{
    public void Apply(IOneToManyCollectionInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Key.ForeignKey("{0}_{1}_FK".AsFormat(
        instance.Member.Name, instance.EntityType.Name));
    }
}

ForeignKeyNameConvention – says that name of every column containing foreign key id should consist of name of type which it points to with “Id” suffix.

public class ForeignKeyNameConvention : IHasManyConvention
{
    public void Apply(IOneToManyCollectionInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Key.Column(instance.EntityType.Name + "Id");
    }
}

PrimaryKeyNameConvention - says that name of every column representing primary key should consist of entity name and “Id” suffix.

public class PrimaryKeyNameConvention : IIdConvention
{
    public void Apply(IIdentityInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Column(instance.EntityType.Name + "Id");
    }
}

ReferenceConvention – says that name of column referenced in many to one convention should consist of entity name and “Id” suffix.

public class ReferenceConvention : IReferenceConvention
{
    public void Apply(IManyToOneInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Column(instance.Property.PropertyType.Name + "Id");
    }
}

StringColumnLengthConvention – says that if length for string column has not been specified, it should be set to 100.

public class StringColumnLengthConvention
    : IPropertyConvention, IPropertyConventionAcceptance
{
    public void Accept(IAcceptanceCriteria<IPropertyInspector> criteria)
    {
        criteria.Expect(x => x.Type == typeof(string))
            .Expect(x => x.Length == 0);
    }

    public void Apply(IPropertyInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Length(100);
    }
}

TableNameConvention – says that if name for table has not been specified, it should be created using concatenation of entity name and “s” suffix.

public class TableNameConvention
    : IClassConvention, IClassConventionAcceptance
{
    public void Accept(IAcceptanceCriteria<IClassInspector> criteria)
    {
        criteria.Expect(x => x.TableName, Is.Not.Set);
    }

    public void Apply(IClassInstance instance)
    {
        instance.Table(instance.EntityType.Name + "s");
    }
}

At the end the most important thing which shows that such conventions make sense. With default Fluent NHibernate conventions DDL generated by NHibernate for MySQL looked like this:

alter table `Athlete`  drop foreign key FK9221C9B94070A6F0

drop table if exists Countries

drop table if exists `Athlete`

create table Countries (
     Id INTEGER NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
     Name VARCHAR(255),
     primary key (Id)
)

create table `Athlete` (
     Id INTEGER NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
     DisplayName VARCHAR(255),
     Email VARCHAR(255),
     Password VARCHAR(255),
     CreatedAt DATETIME,
     IsActive TINYINT(1),
     Country_id INTEGER,
     primary key (Id)
)

alter table `Athlete`
	add index (Country_id),
	add constraint FK9221C9B94070A6F0
	foreign key (Country_id)
	references Countries (Id)

When I have applied conventions mentioned above to my fluent mappings DDL looks like this:

alter table Athletes  drop foreign key Athletes_Country_FK

drop table if exists Athletes

drop table if exists Countries

create table Athletes (
     AthleteId INTEGER NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
     DisplayName VARCHAR(100) not null,
     Email VARCHAR(100) not null,
     Password VARCHAR(100) not null,
     CreatedAt DATETIME not null,
     IsActive TINYINT(1) not null,
     CountryId INTEGER,
     primary key (AthleteId)
)

create table Countries (
     CountryId INTEGER NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
     Name VARCHAR(100) not null,
     primary key (CountryId)
)

alter table Athletes
	add index (CountryId),
	add constraint Athletes_Country_FK
	foreign key (CountryId)
	references Countries (CountryId)

For me it looks much better. Additionally I have made it once and that is it. Now I have to care only about domain model and business logic without thinking about not so important stuff lake names of database objects.