DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by activa

Simple time mocking for testing time-dependent code

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:46:28 GMT

We all love writing unit tests, don't we?. But what if you need to test code that relies on the date or some elapsed time? Just fake the time!

LINQ To SQL Gets Kicked to the Curb... Needs A Good Home!

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:16:02 GMT

Great post on why L2S needs to be supported by the community and why a L2S targeted at the community is a good idea.

Extracting URLs, not perfect but "good enough"

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:52:32 GMT

Detecting URLs in text is harder than you would expect. In fact, it can't be done with a set of hard rules, but we can get very close by using a single .NET regular expression. Purists will protest, but what's wrong with "good enough"?

What's with the BOM in Visual Studio?

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:32:01 GMT

Ever seen weird bytes in your javascript code? Having problems with javascript not working in Google Chrome? Maybe you're the victim of BOM (byte-order marks) bytes that are saved with every javascript file you create in Visual Studio....

ProMesh.NET v2.0 RC1 is (finally) out

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:31:02 GMT

After months of writing documentation, the first release candidate of ProMesh.NET v2.0 has been released in the wild. ProMesh.NET is a powerful MVC framework for .NET 2.0 that has been around for a long time, but today it finally reached another important milestone.

ProMesh.NET v2.0 (MVC Framework) just around the corner

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:48:12 GMT

Time for an update on the state of ProMesh.NET, the open-source MVC Web Application framework I started a few years ago. The last public release was almost 7 months ago, and a lot has been changed since then. The original plan was to create a version 1.5, but I decided against that and made it in a full 2.0 release

The Complete Reference for Any jQuery Developer

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:31:02 GMT

If you ever to do something with jQuery, you should find it in this extensive list.

MVC Routing Security Hole

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:16:11 GMT

Stephen Walther's latest MVC tip introduced me to the MVC framework's ability to pass server variables into actions as parameters. Unfortunately using this feature is a very bad idea and could jeopardize the security of your application. Take a look at a code sample you might find surprising.

Unofficial google shell... awsome

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:16:04 GMT

Web base command shell for google. What else can I say?...

CoolStorage.NET 1.2.0 released

Thu, 29 May 2008 21:29:53 GMT

It has been almost one year since the last public release of CoolStorage.NET ("cool" open-source object mapper for .NET 2.0), but this doesn't mean the product was dead. A lot of people regularly downloaded the latest builds from CodePlex and I received a lot of great feedback, which finally lead to the release of version 1.2.

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 Release

Tue, 27 May 2008 22:16:07 GMT

From ScottGu's weblog - "This morning we released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework. I blogged details last month about an interim source release we did that included many of the changes with this Preview 3 release. Today's build includes some additional features not in last month's drop, some nice enhancements/refinements, as well as Visual Studio tool integration and documentation."

A good coding font makes a difference. Envy Code R, better than ever!

Tue, 27 May 2008 20:46:12 GMT

Am I the only one who believes a great programming font can boost your productivity and increase your coding joy? Check out Damien Guard's superb new release of Envy Code R, my favorite coding font.

The future of .NET, Visual Studio and more

Mon, 26 May 2008 09:31:04 GMT

The career pages of Microsoft give hints what the future holds for us developers. This post picks out the interesting little details about future versions of Visual Studio, .NET Framework, SharePoint, SQL Server etc and analyzes a bit what they could mean.

The problem(s) with value types

Tue, 27 May 2008 19:16:18 GMT

Value types can sometimes cause unexpected behavior. This post explains one of the pitfalls you can encounter when using arrays and lists of value types.

Microsoft Source Analysis for C# Released

Fri, 23 May 2008 18:31:14 GMT

From post: "Source Analysis is similar in many ways to Microsoft Code Analysis (specifically FxCop), but there are some important distinctions. FxCop performs its analysis on compiled binaries, while Source Analysis analyzes the source code directly. For this reason, Code Analysis focuses more on the design of the code, while Source Analysis focuses on layout, readability and documentation."

Wizards are evil

Thu, 22 May 2008 10:19:29 GMT

Generated code is great... if it was generated by you,or you fully understand the generated code! Essentially, when you are using a code generator, you will be screwed at some point in the future.

Generic types and IDisposable, the "using" trick

Wed, 21 May 2008 08:46:03 GMT

This is another one in the series "heck, I never thought of that"... Like most of these articles, if you already knew this trick, ignore me...

SharpTemplate.NET pre-release on CodePlex

Wed, 21 May 2008 15:31:02 GMT

Introducing SharpTemplate.NET, a lightweight general-purpose template engine for .NET 2.0. It allows you to incorporate template parsing in your .NET applications. Perfect for code generators, reporting tools, mass-mailing applications, etc.

I might be an elitist, but you're a misanthrope

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:01:03 GMT

Expresses some of the frustration that comes with a fragmented .NET community; our wobbly triangle of gurus, thought leaders, and the massive base of people who we've let down, in a way, by selling the idea that the tools should do all the work, and drag-and-dropped our colleagues into an expectation of laziness, or at least lulled them into a reluctance to learn new things, which is death to our whole community over the long-run.

Fast, Streaming AJAX Proxy - Continuous Download

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:31:02 GMT

In this article, we will take a look how we can take a conventional AJAX Proxy and make it faster, asynchronous, continuously stream content and thus make it more scalable.

Over 250 High Quality Royalty Free icons set

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:31:02 GMT

Free Icon Download Offers High Quality Royalty Free icons for Windows, Mac and Linux.

if ... else if ... else if ... else ... : an alternative

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:16:02 GMT

Did you know there's an alternative way of writing "if .. else if .. else if .. etc.." in C#? You probably do, but if you don't, read on...

Write more empty lines! They will be read!

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:31:02 GMT

Using empty lines in source code may seem like a waste of precious screen space, but it's crucial to writing readable code.

Accurate method timing helper class

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:06:09 GMT

How many times have you written some timing code around a method call? If the answer is never, move on, skip this article... For timing purposes, I always use a simple "TimeRunner" class that allows you to accurately measure the time it takes to execute a specific method. A kind of "poor man's profiler".

Using the Factory Pattern for reading object graphs

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:06:51 GMT

A simple example on how to use the Factory Method pattern for reading objects from XML, resulting in clean, maintainable code. Examples are in C# 3.0