DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by JamesNK

A Simple .NET Profanity Filter

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:29:48 GMT

A website I am working on right now accepts public comments, and one of the requirements is to do a basic check for dirty language. Surprisingly for such a common problem I wasn't able to find any code on the net that did what I wanted and so I've ended up writing my own. The Censor class is pretty simple: you give it a list of words you want to censor, either simple text or with wildcards, and the censor will star out any matches it finds.

Model design - refactoring domain models using LightSpeed

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:15:00 GMT

If you've used Visual Studio for any length of time, you undoubtedly make heavy use of refactoring. Even the simple refactoring of renaming a class or method and having Visual Studio automatically update all references is a huge time-saver. Until now model design with designers have not provided good refactoring support. This post details how the LightSpeed model designer now supports partial class, solution wide rename and convert to manual implementation refactorings. Provide feedback on domain model refactorings you would like to see.

WPF NotifyIcon Released

Mon, 11 May 2009 06:16:04 GMT

This is an implementation of a NotifyIcon (system tray icon) for the WPF platform. It does not just rely on the corresponding WinForms component, but is a purely independent control which leverages several features of the WPF framework in order to display rich tooltips, popups, context menus, and balloon messages.

.Net Mocking Frameworks - Capability Comparison

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:40:12 GMT

A summary of the capabilities of four of the most popular mocking frameworks for .Net.

No bandwidth MSDN: Reflector

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:01:17 GMT

How you can use Reflector to browse the insides of the .NET framework classes and why choosing Reflector over MSDN will make you a better developer.

JSON Serialization of a DataReader

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:46:03 GMT

On a few occasions recently I've ended up with DataReaders in my AJAX services. The data comes from low level componets with data from APIs over which I have no control and it feeds only feeds data from DataReaders. Rather than converting these readers into more complex data structures it can be more efficient to directly turn these DataReaders into JSON. Here are a couple of ways to do this using a custom serializer and a JavaScriptConverter for JavaScriptSerializer.

Mindscape LightSpeed Designer Visual Studio Addin

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:46:02 GMT

The LightSpeed Model designer is integrated directly into Visual Studio so that you don't have to leave your development environment to create a rich domain model. With a sophisticated design surface that supports both model first and database first approaches you can work exactly how you want without having the tools get in your way. The LightSpeed designer is available as part of every edition of LightSpeed. See their website for a free fully functional trial of their Express Edition. See www.mindscape.co.nz for downloads.

REALLY small unzip utility for Silverlight

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:59:01 GMT

There are quite a few libraries out there that adds zip decompression/compression to Silverlight. However, common to them all is that they add significantly to the size of the resulting .xap. It turns out that Silverlight 2.0 already has zip decompression built-in. It uses this to uncompress the .xap files which really just are zip files with a different file extension. There are several blog posts out there that will tell you how to dynamically load a XAP file and load it. It turns out that if you use the same approach with almost any other zip file, you can actually do the same thing, even though this is not a Silverlight XAP. I don't think this was the original intent. but its still really neat! Here's how to accomplish that, based on a zip file stream:

A QueryString collection for JavaScript

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:31:11 GMT

Used to Request.QueryString? It doesn't exist in JavaScript. Here's a script to create it with no other script dependencies.

Blog Driven Design

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 07:11:03 GMT

Blog Driven Design is discovering code is too verbose to reasonably include in a blog post and is the additional work put into the design to trim it down to a blogable size.

Native JSON in IE8, Firefox 3.5 plus Json.NET

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:46:04 GMT

This post looks at how to use the new native JSON API in IE8 and Firefox 3.5, and how it can complement Json.NET's server side JSON support by parsing and generating JSON on the browser.

MvcContrib v1.0 Released! Download now!

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:16:08 GMT

After official release of ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RTM it's time to release the first version of MvcContrib too! It's ready; download it ;-)

Business for geeks: Naming your software company

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:31:03 GMT

A second post in the series about starting a software development tools company covering the process undertaken in picking the name of the company. Covers points to consider when picking a name for your own software brand. This isn't strictly code but might be interesting for entrepreneurial .net geeks out there.

CodePlex Project of the Month audio interview: Json.NET

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:31:03 GMT

An audio interview about Json.NET, the March CodePlex project of the month. Interview covers what is JSON and Json.NET as well as the trials and tribulations of managing an open source project.

Starting out - The story of starting a software tools company

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:01:10 GMT

Not strictly about coding, this post talks about starting a business that builds tools for software developers (in this case, tools for developers on the Microsoft stack). Covers some of the lessons learned and experiences in the first few months.

Mindscape releases open source ASP.NET MVC extensions

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:01:03 GMT

Mindscape have released an open source library with a collection of helpful extensions to make developing solutions with the ASP.NET MVC framework easier. Attention has been paid to ensuring it's easy to deliver solutions based on LightSpeed but there is also significant samples and code for developers working on MVC solutions with other domain modeling tools. Patches and suggestions are welcome.

ButtercupReader - A Silverlight Digital Talking Book Reader

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:19:41 GMT

Launched at Mix09, ButtercupReader is a free Silverlight 2.0 application for viewing and playing digital talking books (DAISY) on the web by blind and partially sighted users.

A lap around MIX09 keynote announcements

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:31:09 GMT

Simone collects all the big announcements from MIX09 and provides links to get deeper into the new stuff

FizzBin - The Technical Support Secret Handshake

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:46:04 GMT

I hate that 5 minute to 5 hour long "ramp up" when I'm on the phone with any kind of technical support as they realize that we both know what we're doing. Or at least, one of us does.

Cache-and-Collect Lifecycle Management in Ninject 2.0

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 23:31:11 GMT

An explanation of a new solution to an old problem with inversion of control.

Single table and concrete table inheritance with LightSpeed ORM

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:46:02 GMT

One of the benefits of working with an O/R Mapper is the ability to use inheritance and have your objects still persist to the database. In this post, Mindscape explains the difference between two types of relational inheritance - Single Table and Concrete Table. The post also demonstrates how to create these models using the LightSpeed O/R Mapper.

Ninject 2 Reaches Beta

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:31:03 GMT

Version 2.0 of the Ninject dependency injection framework has reached beta status.

WPF Flow Diagrams 1.0 Released

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:33:53 GMT

Mindscape have released WPF Flow Diagrams - easily create rich interactive flow diagrams in your WPF solutions with this powerful component. Commercial, but with a 14 day trial, it's useful to explore if you need this capability in your applications.

Add Twitter to your blog the right way with caching

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:16:03 GMT

Twitter offers a JavaScript API to add Twitter to your blog or other website. This post looks at the various approaches to using Twitter's JavaScript API and how to improve user experience by caching Twitter content client side.

Awful Command Line Parsing API in .NET 4.0

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:31:02 GMT

Miguel de Icaza about System.Core's new System.Shell.CommandLine