DK Development

DropNet2 - async/await, WinRT and more!

2013-03-28T00:00:00-07:00

DropNet has been in NuGet now for 2 years! (As of March 31st). Which means its getting old and some of the methods and technologies it was built off are out of date.

Working on my own Windows Phone Dropbox client BoxShot I started running into some limitations of DropNet then finding that DropNet was actually being held back from by RestSharp. No offence to John Sheehan or any of the RestSharp contributers, they have built an excellent library which still use for numerous projects. However I wanted something more flexible and I wanted to use new technologies such as async/await and support for WinRT (ARM).

So it was time to rewrite DropNet from the ground up using not RestSharp but the new portable HTTP Client from Microsoft's Base Class Library which now supports Windows Phone (7.5+).

And here it is: DropNet2 (I'm not very good at naming things). Source is available on Github including a basic Windows Phone 8 sample project (login and folder contents functionality).

Fork

What different about it you say? Lets have a look at the code. I kept the API pretty similar to the original.

{
	var client = new DropNetClient("APIKEY", "APPSECRET");
	client.SetUserToken("TOKEN", "SECRET");

	var rootMetaData = await client.GetMetaData("/");
	var myFile = await client.GetFile("/MyFile.txt");
}

supported API functions

oauth/request_token
oauth/access_token
account/info
metadata
shares
search
media
files (GetFile and Upload)
fileops/delete
fileops/copy
fileops/move
fileops/create_folder
thumbnails
delta

platform support

.NET 4.5
.NET for Windows Store apps (WinRT)
Windows Phone 7.5 and higher
Silverlight 4 and higher

future plans

Implement remaining API functions
Progress feedback on upload and download functions
Better error handling
Support for Mono
Unit Tests

TFS Builds for Octopus Deploys

2012-07-15T00:00:00-07:00

I have been playing around with Octopus Deploy lately and I have setup our TFS build server to automatically create releases and deploy to a Dev environment.

Here is how you can setup a TFS build server to create NuGet packages ready for deployment through Octopus. Building off my previous post TFS to private NuGet.

Lets start with the build script:

<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
    <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\MSBuildCommunityTasks\MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets"/>

    <PropertyGroup>
        <VersionMajor>0</VersionMajor>
        <VersionMinor>8</VersionMinor>
        <VersionPatch>1</VersionPatch>
        <BuildOutputDirectory>C:\Builds\Temp\SiriuswareUtil</BuildOutputDirectory>
    </PropertyGroup>

    <Target Name="Build">
        <MSBuild Projects="SiriuswareUtil/SiriuswareUtil.csproj" Targets="Build"
			      Properties="Configuration=Release;WebProjectOutputDir=$(BuildOutputDirectory);" />
        <TfsVersion TfsLibraryLocation="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0"
		    LocalPath="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)..\">
			<Output TaskParameter="Changeset" PropertyName="ChangesetNumber"/>
        </TfsVersion>
        <Copy SourceFiles="$(BuildOutputDirectory)\SiriuswareUtil.nuspec" DestinationFolder="$(BuildOutputDirectory)" />
        <Exec Command='"C:\NuGet\NuGet.exe" pack "$(BuildOutputDirectory)\SiriuswareUtil.nuspec" -OutputDirectory "\\grp-dev02\f$\Websites\Ardent.NuGet\Packages"  -basePath "$(BuildOutputDirectory)" -Version "$(VersionMajor).$(VersionMinor).$(VersionPatch)$(ChangesetNumber)" -NoPackageAnalysis' />
        <Exec Command='"C:\Octopus\Octo.exe" create-release --server=http://octopus.ardentleisure.com/api --project=SiriuswareUtil --deployto=Dev --apikey=YOUR_KEY_HERE' />
	</Target>
</Project>

Now lets have a look at what each part does:

<PropertyGroup>
    <VersionMajor>0</VersionMajor>
    <VersionMinor>8</VersionMinor>
    <VersionPatch>1</VersionPatch>
    <BuildOutputDirectory>C:\Builds\Temp\SiriuswareUtil</BuildOutputDirectory>
</PropertyGroup>

The PropertyGroup element defines a few variables for later use. Starting at the top there are 3 properties for the version number, these let us set the version of the package (later on we also append the TFS changeset). The BuildOutputDirectory is a temporary path to build the project to so we can generate the NuGet package from the output.

<MSBuild Projects="SiriuswareUtil/SiriuswareUtil.csproj" Targets="Build"
	Properties="Configuration=Release;WebProjectOutputDir=$(BuildOutputDirectory);" />

Next we need to build the project, this part is pretty straight forward, set the path to the project file and the output directory. This project is a web project so I'm using the WebProjectOutputDir property on the build which publishs the project to the set path.

<TfsVersion TfsLibraryLocation="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0"
	LocalPath="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)..\">
	<Output TaskParameter="Changeset" PropertyName="ChangesetNumber"/>
</TfsVersion>

Now we want to check what the TFS changeset is so we can append it to the package version. For this we need the MSBuild Community Tasks with the import at the top of the build script. This function takes a few parameters such as the TFS binary location and outputs to a set variable (in this instance its "ChangesetNumber").

<Copy SourceFiles="$(BuildOutputDirectory)\SiriuswareUtil.nuspec" DestinationFolder="$(BuildOutputDirectory)" />

The next element ensures the nuspec file is copied to the output directory, instead of having to include it as content and it getting deployed to our servers.

<Exec Command='"C:\NuGet\NuGet.exe" pack "$(BuildOutputDirectory)\SiriuswareUtil.nuspec" -OutputDirectory "\\grp-dev02\f$\Websites\Ardent.NuGet\Packages"  -basePath "$(BuildOutputDirectory)" -Version "$(VersionMajor).$(VersionMinor).$(VersionPatch)$(ChangesetNumber)" -NoPackageAnalysis' />

Now we call the NuGet command line to create the package, pointing it at our nuspec file and setting to the output to where ever out nuget server is. This is where we also set the version of the package using our set properties and the tfs changeset number (-Version "$(VersionMajor).$(VersionMinor).$(VersionPatch)$(ChangesetNumber)").

<Exec Command='"C:\Octopus\Octo.exe" create-release --server=http://octopus.ardentleisure.com/api --project=SiriuswareUtil --deployto=Dev --apikey=YOUR_KEY_HERE' />

Lastly we want to use Octopus-Tools octo.exe to create a release in Octopus and schedule a deploy for our Dev environment. Octo.exe is a command line interface for the octopus server api, we just need to set a few variables for it to use such as the server address, project we want to create the release for and an API key that can be obtained through the web interface.

So the process for code changes is now:

Developer checks in code to TFS
CI Build server picks up code change fires off a build of the custom script
NuGet package is created in repo
New release is created and deployed to Dev environment via Octopus

And now I know exactly what code is running on all my servers and can easily deploy new versions.

YeahToast - WinJS Toast Library

2012-07-11T00:00:00-07:00

Windows 8 Toast notifications with WinJS isnt the easiest thing to do. First you have to figure out what template you want, then get the XML from the template manager, then modifying the XML with the image url, title and description. Then finally creating a toast notifier to parse the XML into a toast notification.

I wanted an easier solution to add Toasts to WinJS apps, something closer to the javascript alert function: alert("Message does here!"); So we started the YeahToast library, a WinJS library for easily adding toast notifications to Windows 8 applications.

YeahToast can automatically determine the template to use if you dont specifically set one, it does this based on the other options you give it. If there is an image set it will use a template with an image. If you set both text contents it will use a template with a 2 content lines. If you just set the title it will use the template with just the title.

Basic usage:

YeahToast.show({ title: "YEAHTOAST!" });
YeahToast.show({ title: "YEAHTOAST!", textContent: "message does here" });
YeahToast.show({ title: "YEAHTOAST!", textContent: "message does here", textContent2: "message line 2" });
YeahToast.show({ imgsrc: "images/placeholder.png", title: "This one has an image!", textContent: "something something" });

Options:

{
	template: , //Windows.UI.Notifications.ToastTemplateType to define the toast template if not set YeahToast will guess based on other parameters
	imgsrc: , //Image url to appear on toast
	title: , //The toasts header text
	textContent: , //Toast description line 1
	textContent2: , //Toast description line 2
}

Where to get it

PM> Install-Package YeahToast

Or download the js file directly from Github (https://github.com/Tboda/YeahToast/blob/master/lib/YeahToast.js)

What they look like:

The source for YeahToast is available on github to add the your project. There is also an example project to show basic usage.

Fork

Post JSON data to web services in Windows 8

2012-04-27T00:00:00-07:00

I have started working on a few metro style apps on Windows 8 using WinJS so I thought I might show some of my findings.

Using the WinJS.xhr function. (MSDN on WinJS.xhr)

Lets have a look at a basic basic example: (GET)

WinJS.xhr({ url: "http://example.com/api/test" });

This function takes an options object as a parameter. The url property is the only required option for this function, this sets the url for the request.

A more advanced example: (POST)

WinJS.xhr({
            type: "post",
            url: "http://example.com/api/test",
            headers: { "Content-type": "application/json" },
            data: JSON.stringify({ someProperty: "DK" })
        })

Looking at the example above we have set a few other options here:

type - this is the HTTP method used for the request (get, post, head, etc.)
data - this is the actual data I want to send through with the request
headers - this lets us set specific headers on the http request (NOTE: If your sending JSON make sure you set the content-type here!)

Now if we wanted to add handlers for success and error we can do this using the Promise.done method (MSDN on Promise.done)

WinJS.xhr({
            type: "post",
            url: "http://example.com/api/test",
            headers: { "Content-type": "application/json" },
            data: JSON.stringify({ someProperty: "DK" })
        }).done(onSuccess, onError, onProgress);

There you go, thats using WinJS to post JSON data to web services.

Installing ASP.NET MVC3 after VS11 Beta (error)

2012-04-16T00:00:00-07:00

I have been playing around with Windows 8 lately, Installed it on my desktop got pretty excited about metro apps so I installed the Visual Studio 11 Beta as well. Then I had to do some work from home so I installed Visual Studio 2010, fired up the our solution only to find out I need MVC3 installed.

OK, run the installer - Error.
I tried both install types, Web and Full download and again - Error.
Checked the logs and found this:

Returning IDOK. INSTALLMESSAGE_ERROR [A later version of NuGet is already installed. Setup will now exit.]
PerformOperation returned 1603 (translates to HRESULT = 0x80070643)

Turns out the MVC3 installer is trying to install a version of NuGet that is older than the version that VS11 Beta installs so it fails causing the entire install to fail.

Work around

This is what I did to fix it. (Note: this might not work for everyone)

Run the install (even though it fails) but leave it open on the screen at the end that says "Installation Did Not Succeed" (This is very important!)
Now you need to track down the temp files for the installer it should be in a folder D:/Temp/ext27692 (I think this goes onto whatever drive has the most free space)
Make a copy of this entire folder because finishing the installer will delete it.
Now that you have all the install files you just need to run the installers for the different components (to double check what they were you can open the log from the installer and see which msi's it ran)
So install AspNetWebPagesVS2010Tools.msi then AspNetMVC3VS2010Tools.msi

And thats it, ASP.NET MVC3 tools are now installed!

Potential employee Y U NO GITHUB

2012-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

In the last few years I have started to become more and more public with my side projects, some of them have even become quite popular.

I'd like to think I have a decent online presence for a .NET Developer, my Github Account has 5 original public repos, I have this blog that gets over 100 hits per day, I even have a few apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace to my name.

So the past month or so we have been on the hunt for a new Software Developer at Ardent Leisure to expand our small team. We put an ad out on seek and got about 40 applications. 40 Seems pretty good and a lot of the resumes showed a lot of potential for the job with work experience and education. Thats all well and good on paper but we wanted to see proof that they do infact have the skills they claim to. So, to Google!

I guess I may have just had high expectations after looking at the online presence of some of my developer friends who I have worked with.

Tim Holman: Blog - Github
Luke Lowrey: Blog - Github
Benjii Cull: Blog - Github
Anthony Zigenbine: Blog - Github

Lets get back to our 40 applications, I did a fair bit of research on these before compiling a 'short-list' and this is what I found:

LinkedIn - 14
Twitter - 2
Github - 0
Website of some sort - 1

Now I know just having a Github account doesn't make you an excellent developer.

However it does help to get you noticed by potential employers if you have more to show off that is publicly accessible. This also includes anything you have previously worked on in the past. For example I have a portfolio section on my CV which includes among other things this blog and gigpig.fm which even though they aren't hugely popular they are still a good example of some of the work I have previously done.

To me I see my resume itself as a formality rather than something to actually gauge my skillset off.

So how do you show off your skills when applying for a job? Do you rely on an impressive resume? Do you have an online presence ready for employers? Do you try for both?

DroppedBoxx is now Open Source!

2012-02-21T00:00:00-08:00

Back in 2010 I started a project for uni called DroppedBoxx, it was a dropbox client for Windows Mobile 6.5.

This app got me starting to develop mobile apps and sparked my interest for working with web APIs (especially Dropbox as it spawned the DropNet library). It began as a free download during its beta period to get feedback for it while I was developing it for uni and later was sold for about $1 on various stores but it is no longer available and since I no longer have a Windows Mobile 6.5 device I lost interest.

No updates for almost a year :(

So I have now decided to open source it!

I have put the source up on Github for anyone to fork, as well as the latest .cab installer. https://github.com/dkarzon/DroppedBoxx

The source code is actually made up of a few different components.

I must give credit to Fluid .NET controls, DroppedBoxx has a slightly customised version of the library in it.

I should also give credit to RestSharp for which a lot of the http request handling was based off (modified to work with .NET Compact Framework)

Fork

JabbrPhone: It's like JabbR on your Phone

2012-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

I like development, working with new technologies and Windows Phone and over the past few weeks I have been working on a project that combines all of these. I call it JabbrPhone, its a Windows Phone client for Jabbr (the signalR based developer chat site).

So why did I want to make a phone app for JabbR? Well simply, for fun and to try something new that I haven't done before (in this instance its signalR).

For those who don't know what signalR is:

Async signaling library for .NET to help build real-time, multi-user interactive web applications.

It really is an awesome library. The JabbR project is also based on this and open sourced on Github which was great for me to get started.

The app isn't too far off at the moment, still a bit to do before its officially released. Current functionality:

Login/Create user (/nick)
List rooms
Join a room
send messages to a room (and get responses)
List users in a room

Things left to do:

Lobby functions
User Actions
Handle links in messages better
support for private rooms

The source is available on github: https://github.com/dkarzon/JabbrPhone

Or download the xap from here: http://bit.ly/zTsCpu

abSee 'ay be see' - A/B Test library

2011-12-13T00:00:00-08:00

I have often wondered “What if” when it comes design aspects of a website.

What if this button was green instead of blue?
What if I call it an upgrade instead of a purchase?
What if the background wasn’t as dark?
What if I make that notification flashing red instead of dark yellow?

You get the point…

Its usage is simple enough also:

Firstly fire up an instance of the Tester, do so by calling the Start function. Or you could filter out certain users here to only show tests for them. (non-Admins etc.)

protected void Application_BeginRequest()
{
    ABTester.Start();
}

From there we can fire off tests to the User where ever we like by calling the Test function. Now to make a test we need to give it a name, this will be used to identify what we are testing in this specific instance. Then you give the function the different options and it will randomly select 1 for you as the output and save the result.

var output = ABTester.Test("MyTest1", "A", "B");

After running the test we then need to let the Tester know if it was successful or not so we can track conversions of the different options. We do this by calling the Convert function with the test name from the test we ran before. abSee will then store that result for us as converted.

ABTester.Convert("MyTest1");

So now we are running tests, how do I see the results?

You can get results for a given test using the GetResults function, this function returns a list of ABSeeResult which contains a few details about the test instance as well as the option that was selected and if it was converted or not.

var results = abSee.ABTester.GetResults("MyTest1");

More detailed documentation is coming soon with details on implementing custom storage and user identification.

Feel free to leave me some feedback about abSee or even fork it on Github.

BoxShot v2.0: Mango, Logo, Pictures hub and more

2011-11-23T00:00:00-08:00

So I got a fair bit of feedback from the old BoxShot logo and how most of my users disliked it (some even called it offensive). Now that Iâ€™ve had my fun I decided to put together a serious update for the app, here is what this new update (that I am calling v2.0) includes:

NEW LOGO!

As mentioned before I have changed the logo, this gives the app a more professional look and fits in much better with the Metro UI of Windows Phone. Hope you all like it.

Its now Mango...

This version is build for Mango so it takes advantage of fast app switching and general Mango goodness.

Picture Hub Integration

BoxShot now integrates into the Pictures Hub, so you can share your photos through BoxShot to your dropbox folder.

New Dropbox API

Dropbox have recently updated their API to be more secure. For a user this pretty much means the login process has changed, so now instead of giving the app the Email and Password you login to the dropbox mobile site and give permission to BoxShot.

Background Live Tile

The Live Tiles are now generated on the phone itself with a background agent, this makes them much more stable.

Referrals

BoxShot now lets you send out referral links to email or social networks so you can get that extra free space!

Others?

Some UI fixes (better following the metro style guide)
Few bug fixes (to do with ads and the tile colour picker)
Picture view now rotates and can pinch to zoom

Download it now from the Windows Phone Marketplace!

Ad-Free Version:

Free Version:

Future Versions

I'm always open to feedback about what new features users would like to see but heres a list of whats on the roadmap.

Pin Folders to start screen (maybe files as well)
Thumbnails for pictures
Fix bug when uploading files with international characters

Update:

All of the above features have now been implemented in v2.2 (Thumbnails and international characters fixed in v2.1)

PurpleSmoke: Ecommerce for SkyPoint

2011-09-15T00:00:00-07:00

So in my day job I work for a company called Ardent Leisure, and lately I have been working on a massive project to build an integrated ecommerce engine for SkyPoint, Dreamworld and WhiteWater World. I thought I might take some time to talk about the technologies used here, being a .NET developer I kept pretty close to the Microsoft Stack, with a few open source libraries in the mix.

framework	Microsoft ASP.NET
language	C# (.NET v4.0)
development environment	Visual Studio 2010
web frameworks	ASP.NET MVC3
client side framework	JQuery (+ UI and tmpl) Knockout
web service layer	Windows Communication Framework
database	SQL Server 2008 R2
data access layer	LINQ to SQL
source control	Team Foundation Server 2010

3rd Party Tools:

Winning Combinations:

For me their are a few winning combinations here:

1. RestSharp + Newtonsoft JSON.NET + WCF.

Now my love for RestSharp has been widely documented but I cant say it enough, this is an awesome library and using it with a WCF web service was great. However this combination is not without its flaws, mianly DateTimes in WCF. But I was able to get around this â€œFeatureâ€ by creating my own WCFDate Class which serialises to and from a formatted string. This was quite a hack but its working pretty well for us at the moment.

2. Knockout + Jquery + tmpl.

This was the first project that I have actually used Knockout for and it did take some time to get up to speed on how it all works together but now I couldn't imagine doing this project without it. It gave us the flexibility we needed to display the data we needed where ever we wanted.

You can find PurpleSmoke lurking among the CMS Pages at www.skypoint.com.au

From TFS to Private NuGet

2011-08-19T00:00:00-07:00

Let me start by saying this: I love NuGet, its straight up awesome!

This post is about how I created a TFS CI Build to create NuGet packages and push them to a private NuGet server hosted on site.

<PropertyGroup>
    <VersionMajor>0</VersionMajor>
    <VersionMinor>1</VersionMinor>
</PropertyGroup>

I then wanted to include the TFS Changeset number as the 3rd part of the version. So I kicked off a TfsVersion task which outputs the changeset number of a specific path (Set this to the project root to get all changes).

<TfsVersion
  TfsLibraryLocation="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0"
  LocalPath="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)">
  <Output TaskParameter="Changeset" PropertyName="ChangesetNumber"/>
</TfsVersion>

From there I build the Project, normally the TFS build outputs the dlls to a binaries folder in the build output folder, but I decided to skip the nuspec file step but pointing NuGet at the project file directly. However you could create a nuspec file and point that to the built dlls, your choice. I also set the version number here for the build.

<MSBuild Projects="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\Ardent.Common\Ardent.Common.csproj"
    Targets="Build"
    Properties="Configuration=Debug;
      OutDir=$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\Ardent.Common\Bin\Debug\;
    ApplicationVersion=$(VersionMajor).$(VersionMinor).$(ChangesetNumber)" />

So now we have built our project and we have the version we want so lets create the package. Using the Exec function I then run the NuGet.exe pack command on my project file using the –Version flag to set the version of the package. I also cheated a bit here by setting the –OutputDirectory flag and pointing that to the packages folder on the NuGet server I created. This will populate the feed now with the new package.

<Exec Command="C:\NuGet\NuGet.exe pack $(MSBuildProjectDirectory)\Ardent.Common\Ardent.Common.csproj -Version $(VersionMajor).$(VersionMinor).$(ChangesetNumber) -OutputDirectory \\grp-dev02\f$\Websites\Ardent.NuGet\Packages"></Exec>

The only thing left to do is create a TFS build definition under that points to my Ardent.CommonBuild.proj file in source control set the definition to CI mode. Done!

Now for every check-in to that project in TFS I get a new package created with the updated code then NuGet handles the updates in all of my other projects.

Life is good…

BoxShot gets a live tile!

2011-08-15T00:00:00-07:00

Following the recent release of my Windows Phone 7 app BoxShot, I have implemented a live tile displaying your dropbox.com quota info.

Boring old tile	Fancy new tile	Another fancy new tile

Also, you can customise the colour of the tile from the settings screen.

Thats pretty much it for now, be sure to leave feedback for any new features you want!

BoxShot – Its like Dropbox on your phone…

2011-07-23T00:00:00-07:00

BoxShot is a dropbox app for Windows Phone 7.

Features:

Open files from your Dropbox using their default apps (Office files, PDFs, etc.)
View/Edit text files within BoxShot with the built in editor
View Image files within BoxShot and save them to your library
Copy/Move files or folders within your dropbox folder
Delete files or folder from your Dropbox folder
Rename files or folders in your Dropbox folder
Email a public file link
View Account usage information

BoxShot also lets you add your frequently used folder to a favourites list which are displayed on the main Panorama.

Premium Version:

Free Version:

DateTime + WCF: How I tamed the beast

2011-06-29T00:00:00-07:00

I have been working a bit with WCF lately and like everyone else use Json with WCF I ran into some issues with DateTime formats. I kept trying to find a valid solution to this where it outputted a readable value.

Eventually I started outputting the DateTime as a formatted string and this worked, but it meant I have to create new string variables in all of my classes instead of the DateTimes that I already had and was using, but then I still needed the variable in its DateTime form.

So I came up with the WCFDate class, at its heart this class outputs a string in a set format, this allows it to be easily read by what ever needs to. I could then replace all of my DateTimes with WCFDate and all was good in the world.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Globalization;

/// &lt;summary&gt;
/// Class to help get around the craziness of WCF DateTime formats (Use this class instead of DateTime for WebService Models)
/// &lt;/summary&gt;
public class WCFDate
{

    public static string DateTimeFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss zz";

    /// &lt;summary&gt;
    /// The Date as a formatted string 
    /// &lt;/summary&gt;
    public string Data { get; set; }

    /// &lt;summary&gt;
    /// Basic constructor (with no value)
    /// &lt;/summary&gt;
    public WCFDate() { }
    /// &lt;summary&gt;
    /// String constructor setting a Formatted string for the DateTime
    /// &lt;/summary&gt;
    /// &lt;param name="data"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;
    public WCFDate(string data)
    {
        Data = data;
    }
    /// &lt;summary&gt;
    /// DateTime constructor, sets the Data to the formatted String from the DateTime
    /// &lt;/summary&gt;
    /// &lt;param name="date"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;
    public WCFDate(DateTime date)
    {
        Data = date.ToString(DateTimeFormat);
    }

    /// &lt;summary&gt;
    /// DateTime constructor, sets the Data to the formatted String from the DateTime
    /// &lt;/summary&gt;
    /// &lt;param name="date"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;
    public WCFDate(DateTime? date)
    {
        if (date.HasValue)
        {
            Data = date.Value.ToString(DateTimeFormat);
        }
    }

    /// &lt;summary&gt;
    /// Check if the class is holding a Date or not
    /// &lt;/summary&gt;
    public bool HasDate
    {
        get
        {
            return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Data);
        }
    }

    /// &lt;summary&gt;
    /// Gets the DateTime the class represents
    /// &lt;/summary&gt;
    /// &lt;returns&gt;&lt;/returns&gt;
    public DateTime GetDate()
    {
        try
        {
            return DateTime.ParseExact(Data, DateTimeFormat, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture);
        }
        catch
        {
            return new DateTime();
        }
    }
}

Follow the Gist of this class or feel free to add to it.

AppEvents - Do stuff when things happen (WP7)

2011-04-29T00:00:00-07:00

Ever wanted an easy way for apps to track certain events then run code based off what events the user has triggered? Well now you can with AppEvents!

So AppEvents is a Windows Phone 7 library to manage events for a user across multiple sessions. In this example I will use it with CodeTrack to prompt the user to rate the app after they have added 3 repos.

Lets get started, App.xaml.cs (this code can be put anywhere in the app but I felt this was better to be done at the start of the app)

public App()
{
    ...
    EventClient.New()
        .Add(RuleSet.When("rate-app",
            el =&gt; el.Any(e =&gt; e.Name == "addrepo" &amp;&amp; e.Occurrrences.Count &gt; 2))
            .Do(r =&gt; AskToRate())
        );
}

Now lets break that down, first we have the New() function being called, this creates the instance (and sets the Current singleton in the EventClient class). It also uses the default JsonEventStorageProvider to store the EventStore data, this can be overwritten with a type parameter on the new function:

EventClient.New&lt;MyCustomEventStoreage&gt;()

Now this is where the RuleSets are added to the client using RuleSet.When() The first parameter of this function is a name of the rule. This is mainly to keep track of the rule and make sure we don’t run it twice. The second parameter is a Func<UserEventList, bool> which means we can create lamba expressions to be run against the UserEventList object, this expression tells the RuleSet when it should fire its Do Action.

    .Add(RuleSet.When("rate-app",
        el =&gt; el.Any(e =&gt; e.Name == "addrepo" &amp;&amp; e.Occurrrences.Count &gt; 2))
        .Do(r =&gt; AskToRate())
    );

So where do I get it?

The last part to this is firing off the events this part is very simple.

    EventClient.Current.Fire("addrepo");

And thats pretty much it, the library then does the rest

The library also allows for manual checking of events if for instance you fire an event on a page but want the RuleSet to be executed on a different page. To do this we simply add a false optional parameter to the Fire method to stop it running the RuleSets with the event. We can also manually run rules, either singly by the RuleSet name or all the rules in the list. We can also set the EventClient to not save the EventStore using the provider each time (and just have it saved later for performance).

EventClient.Current.Fire("addrepo", false);
EventClient.Current.Fire("addrepo", false, false);
EventClient.Current.RunRule("rate-app");
EventClient.Current.RunRules();
EventClient.Current.SaveEventStore();

So where do I get it?

The project if on GitHub for your forking, issues and discussions.AppEvents on Github.

Windows Mobile 6: Legacy

I have also made a Windows Mobile 6 version of this library but haven't actively tested it too much, if you feel like giving it a go be sure to let me know how you go.

Dropbox on Windows Phone 7 with DropNet

2011-04-01T00:00:00-07:00

So I have been working on an open source Dropbox client library for a while now called DropNet. I have recently put this project into NuGet so its super easy to add Dropbox support to your Windows Phone 7 apps.

Update: The source for this sample project is available here: https://github.com/dkarzon/DropNet/tree/master/DropNet.Samples/DropNet.Samples.WP7

I’ll start with a File -> New Project, creating a sample Windows Phone Application.

First thing to do is install the DropNet package, NuGet will automatically detect the type of project you are using and add the DropNet reference for that project type (eg. DropNet.WindowsPhone for Windows Phone 7 projects.)

Ok, now we can start with the App, for starters I created a global variable for my DropNetClient instance.

GlobalClient = new DropNetClient("API KEY", "API SECRET");

Now from that we will need to let the user login so my main page has a basic login form, 2 textboxes for Email and Password and a button to make it work.

private void Login_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    //try login
    App.GlobalClient.LoginAsync(_model.Email, _model.Password,
        (response) =&gt;
        {
            if (response.Data != null)
            {
                //DropNet automatically sets the result token inside the client
                NavigationService.Navigate(new Uri("/FilesPage.xaml", UriKind.Relative));
            }
        });
}

DropNets Login function automatically saves the user Token and Secret to its client instance so we dont have to set it. Then I just navigate to a new page where we will attempt to browse our Dropbox Folder.

This page has a basic view model with 1 property for the folders content.

private ObservableCollection&lt;MetaData&gt; _contents;
public ObservableCollection&lt;MetaData&gt; Contents
{
    get { return _contents; }
    set
    {
        _contents = value;
        NotifyPropertyChanged("Contents");
    }
}

Pretty easy, the page itself simply binds this collection to a listbox displaying the Name and an icon if its a folder.

Ok, now to actually get the data from Dropbox… We do this by calling our DropNetClient’s GetMetaDataAsync method. This method takes a path parameter so we can tell it which folder to get the metadata for.

App.GlobalClient.GetMetaDataAsync("/",
    (response) =&gt;
    {
        foreach (var c in response.Data.Contents.OrderBy(f =&gt; f.Name).OrderByDescending(f =&gt; f.Is_Dir))
        {
            _model.Contents.Add(c);
        }
    });

After getting the MetaData I then order it, folders first then alphabetically.

Wait, really? Thats it?

Yep! Thats my Dropbox folder.

Now to make it even better we can handle the listbox’s selection change event and if the selected item was a folder we can show its contents.

private void ListBox_SelectionChanged(object sender, System.Windows.Controls.SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.AddedItems.Count > 0)
    {
        var selected = (e.AddedItems[0] as MetaData);

        //if its a folder browse to it
        if (selected.Is_Dir)
        {
            _model.Contents = new ObservableCollection&lt;MetaData&gt;();
            App.GlobalClient.GetMetaDataAsync(selected.Path,
            (response) =&gt;
            {
                foreach (var c in response.Data.Contents.OrderBy(f =&gt; f.Name).OrderByDescending(f =&gt; f.Is_Dir))
                {
                    _model.Contents.Add(c);
                }
            });
        }
    }
}

There we go, thats the basis for a Dropbox app using DropNet, lets see what we can come up with!

DropNet Implements most of the API’s functions, including :

Uploading files
Downloading files
Creating folders
Creating an account
Getting account info
Deleting files/folders
Data usage counter

I’m always updating the project over at GitHub, drop by and let me know what you think or if you have any feature requests/bugs. GitHub Project.

Or check out the NuGet Package here.

BitBucket API from Windows Phone 7 and C#

2011-03-26T00:00:00-07:00

With my latest update of CodeTrack (1.2) I implemented BitBucket as a provider, so you can watch repositories from there now as well. On the app itself there are a few search functions using the BitBucket API, this post will provide some insight and example code for doing this.

So basically I wanted to go from having nothing at all (no BitBucket user, no username, no repo slug/id) to being able to search for repositories by either their name or their owners username.

Note: The BitBucket API has recently changed to allow you to do this by giving the repository responses the Onwer property.

As always, RestSharp was used in the making of this code sample.

public class BitBucketRepoList
{
    public List<BitBucketRepo> Repositories { get; set; }
}

public class BitBucketRepo
{
    public string Website { get; set; }
    public string Slug { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Owner { get; set; }
    public int FollowersCount { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

Searching by Repo Name

This request is pretty straight forward, RestClient with the base url for the API, RestRequest with the Resource “repositories” then add a get parameter of "name” with the search term. (API Doco)

_client = new RestClient("https://api.bitbucket.org/1.0");
var request = new RestRequest("repositories/");

request.AddParameter("name", searchTerm);

_client.ExecuteAsync&lt;BitBucketRepoList&gt;(request, (response) =&gt;
{
    //Do stuff here with response
});

Searching by Repo Owner

Now for this request, BitBucket API doesnt actually support searching on usernames so these must be exact matches on the username.

_client = new RestClient("https://api.bitbucket.org/1.0");
var request = new RestRequest("users/{username}");

request.AddParameter("username", username, ParameterType.UrlSegment);

_client.ExecuteAsync&lt;BitBucketRepoList&gt;(request, (response) =&gt;
{
    //Do stuff here with response
});

And there you have it, BitBucket API from Windows Phone 7. (The above code will also work in Silverlight/WPF as well as Win forms or ASP.NET depending on the version of RestSharp used.)

CodeTrack–Source control monitor for Windows Phone 7

2011-02-08T00:00:00-08:00

CodeTrack is a Windows Phone 7 app for monitoring source control repositories.

Recently I have become more and more active in the open source community, with many different projects on the go, be it for work or a side project im working on or something else entirely. So I wanted an application where I could keep up with progress on these projects as well as others, and this is how the idea of CodeTrack came about.

CodeTrack has been designed to be as simple as possible. Users add repos, they appear in their list, commits show up in their feed and they get push notifications when commits happen.

Current Features:

Ability to add Repositories from Github (public only) by searching
SVN Repository support
View commit feed of all "watched" repositories
Push Notifications for when new commits arrive
Shake to refresh

Planned Future Features:

Push Notifications per repository (allowing the user to set which repos they want to be notified of new commits for)
Live Tile showing the number of unread commits from CodeTrack
Commit view screen showing the list of updated files
Ability to add private Github Repos
More source control providers (TFS, BitBucket, CodePlex)

Watch CodeTrack in action on YouTube.

So where can you get it? Easy, its available from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace for USD$0.99 (AUD$1.30)

Easy Email Templates in .NET with FluentEmail

2010-09-03T00:00:00-07:00

Update: The “Replace” method of templating in Fluent Email has itself been replaced by a Razor Engine Template. See Luke’s Post here about it.

I always seem to forget how to send emails in .NET which to me seems like such a simple task. Lately I’ve been working on updating an older application of mine that’s soul purpose was to read a database and send emails depending on certain events. I had a look at the current code and saw something like this:

sb.Append("A Transaction has been made...<br />");
sb.Append("<table><tr><th>Reservation Number</th><th>Customer Name</th><th>Email</th><th>Sale Date</th><th>Amount</th></tr>");
sb.AppendFormat("<tr><td>{0}</td><td>{1}</td><td>{2}</td><td>{3}</td><td>{4}</td></tr>",
    transaction.Reservation, transaction.FullName, transaction.Email, transaction.SaleDate, transaction.Amount.ToString("C2"));
sb.AppendFormat("<tr><th>Invoice</th><th>Confirmation</th></tr><tr><td>{0}</td><td>{1}</td></tr></table>", transaction.Invoice, transaction.Confirmation);

Terrible! So I figured while I was updating it I'd work out a better way build up the HTML of the emails. I started with the FluentEmail Project (Luke’s Post about it). From there I added some basic templating features, such as loading a HTML file with placeholders for content and the rest is history…

With my recent updated to FluentEmail I was about to turn something that looked like the above code to this: (as always C# is the code of choice)

//Send Email!
var email = Email
            .From(_fromEmail)
            .To(toAddresses)
            .Subject(string.Format("Siriusware Emailer Confirmation #{0}", transaction.Confirmation))
            .UsingTemplate(@"C:\Emailer\TransactionTemplate.htm")
            .Replace("<%Reservation%>", transaction.Reservation)
            .Replace("<%FullName%>", transaction.FullName)
            .Replace("<%SaleDate%>", transaction.SaleDate.ToShortDateString())
            .Replace("<%Amount%>", transaction.Amount.ToString("C2"))
            .Replace("<%Invoice%>", transaction.Invoice)
            .Replace("<%Confirmation%>", transaction.Confirmation)
            .UsingClient(new SmtpClient(_mailhost));
email.Send();

The HTML inside TransactionTemplate.htm has the below code. This is a basic example but demonstrates the usage of the templates.

<html>
<head>
    <title></title>
</head>
<body>
    A Transaction has been made...<br />
    <table>
        <tr>
            <th>Reservation Number</th>
            <th>Customer Name</th>
            <th>Email</th>
            <th>Sale Date</th>
            <th>Amount</th>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td><%Reservation%></td>
            <td><%FullName%></td>
            <td><%Email%></td>
            <td><%SaleDate%></td>
            <td><%Amount%></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <th>Invoice</th>
            <th>Confirmation</th>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td><%Invoice%></td>
            <td><%Confirmation%></td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</body>
</html>

Pretty damn easy if you ask me.

This also give me the flexibility to edit the HTML file in a proper editor instead of concatenating all those strings together. The main idea was inspired by the MailDefinition class built into .NET but I didnt like the face that: 1 it was part of the System.Web.UI.WebControls namespace when its not a Web Control and wouldnt be used as one. And 2, It attempted to use another Control as a worker for it. So I just extended MailMessage to add the functionality.

All you need to do is download FluentEmail from Github

DroppedBoxx v1.1 – Dropbox for Windows Mobile

2010-06-03T00:00:00-07:00

Update: I have now released DroppedBoxx as Open Source, the source and a downloadable cab are now available over at Github (https://github.com/dkarzon/DroppedBoxx)

I have been developing a Dropbox Client for Windows Mobile called DroppedBoxx and I thought I'd take some time to talk about how it works, my plans for its future and talk about some of the new features of the latest version v1.1 which has now been released to the Windows Phone Marketplace and Handango.

Firstly, the new features in v1.1 include: (Full Changelog)

Two-way Syncing of selected folders
Updated UI (Labeled buttons, Background Uploading, Sync Folders screen is updated so you know when its syncing)
Bug fixes for the Attach to Email and errors caused by loss of connection
Added settings for camera resolution

Login:

This screen is where the User Logs in user their dropbox account. Login button trys to login, keyboard button shows the Windows Mobile SIP keyboard. Exit button exits the app. Remember me saves your login details so next time you run the app your automatically logged in.

Sync Folders/Home Screen:

This is pretty much the Home screen for the application. From here you can add folders for Syncing by clicking New and browsing the phones file system and selecting a Folder to add. The Logout button on the top right obviously logs you out returning to the login screen.

The 5 Buttons down the bottom:

The Sync button starts the â€œSyncâ€ process syncing the folders in the list to your dropbox account into a folder called â€œDroppedboxxâ€ (Note: this feature is unavailable in the Beta versions, more on that later)
The Dropbox Button opens up the root folder of dropbox for you to browse.
The settings button opens the settings screen where you can change app settings (such as Clearing saved login, max file sizes and camera resolution.
The Info button is to show the dropbox User info, including quota and usage but also DroppedBoxx version information and data used by this DroppedBoxx session.
The Exit button closes the app.

Browse Dropbox:

This is where most of the functionality is, from this screen we can upload, download, delete, etc. files from Dropbox. Starting at the top, the Back Button takes you â€œupâ€ a directory in the Dropbox file system or, if your in the dropbox root, takes you back to the Home Screen. The Upload button lets you browse the phones file system and select a file to upload.

Here you have a list of Files and folders that are in the current folder on Dropbox selecting a folder opens up that folder.

The bottom button panel:

The Camera button opens up the Windows Mobile camera application and when you take a photo it uploads it to the folder you are currently in in the Dropbox browser.
The new folder button simply creates a new folder in the current folder, opening up a dialog to enter the Name.
The Delete folder button Deletes the current folder your in (asking for confirmation first)
The Paste button is for moving/copying files, if you have a file in the â€œclipboardâ€ pressing this button will ask if you want to copy or move the file to this folder. (More info in file menu)
The Back Button goes back to the sync folders screen (The Back button on the top left goes up a directory or back to sync folders if your in the dropbox root)

The File Menu:

This is the menu that comes up after selecting a dropbox file.

Save Button Downloads the selected file (opening a file system browser to set the download folder)
Email button, downloads the file to a temp folder and attaches it to a New email message in Pocket Outlook (assuming this is set up it firsts asks you to select the account)
The Copy button puts the selected file in the â€œclipboardâ€ so you can paste it somewhere else in the dropbox file system (giving you options to Copy or Move the file)
The bin button deletes the selected file (asking for confirmation first)
The â€“Menu button simply closes the file menu (to allow access to the Folder menu again)

Settings:

Here you can change the Settings of the application such as clearing saved login details, setting a max filesize for sycning and setting the camera resolution for camera uploads.

Information:

This screen displays application and user info. It shows the DroppedBoxx version number and data sent and received by the application for this session. As well as the users dropbox quota information.

DroppedBoxx can be downloaded from the Windows Phone Marketplace or Handango.

Also you can follow the discussion about this app by going to the thread on XDA.

Dropbox API, RestSharp and C# Part 2: The Revenge!

2010-05-25T00:00:00-07:00

Following on from my previous post where I showed you how to Login and get the Account Info for a Dropbox account. Today we dive into the Box full of files. Uploading, Downloading and Deleting!

A lot has changed since my last post in the way of RestSharp with OAuth. OAuth is now available Out-of-the-box (this can be downloaded from Github). Ok, Time for some code…

Download File:

Update: Fixed a bug in the code that only allowed for text based files to be downloaded. Using restClient.DownloadData now instead of Execute to get the response’s raw Data.

public byte[] DownloadFile(string path)
{
    var restClient = new RestClient("http://api-content.dropbox.com");
    //load the JsonDeserializer for all types
    restClient.ClearHandlers();
    restClient.AddHandler("*", new JsonDeserializer());
    if (!path.StartsWith("/")) path = "/" + path;

    restClient.Authenticator = new OAuthAuthenticator(restClient.BaseUrl, _apiKey, _appsecret, _userLogin.Token, _userLogin.Secret);

    var request = new RestRequest(Method.GET);
    request.Resource = "{version}/files/dropbox{path}";
    request.AddParameter("version", _version, ParameterType.UrlSegment);
    request.AddParameter("path", path, ParameterType.UrlSegment);

    var responseData = restClient.DownloadData(request);

    return responseData;
}

Note: This is assuming the user has already logged in and we have the token/secret (_userLogin).

Starting from the top, we create a new Instance of the RestSharp Client with the baseUrl then set the Json Deserializer for all requests. We then set the RestClient’s Authenticator to the OAuthAuthenticator and give it our baseUrl, all our secrets and that is all we need to do for OAuth (the rest is build into RestSharp, awesome?!). Now we create the Request up, its a GET method, set the version and path of the file to download call Execute and you have just downloaded your first Dropbox API file! I then converted this to a stream so save back to a local file.

Delete File:

public bool DeleteFile(string path)
{
    var restClient = new RestClient("http://api.dropbox.com");
    //load the JsonDeserializer for all types
    restClient.ClearHandlers();
    restClient.AddHandler("*", new JsonDeserializer());

    if (!path.StartsWith("/")) path = "/" + path;

    restClient.Authenticator = new OAuthAuthenticator(_restClient.BaseUrl, _apiKey, _appsecret, _userLogin.Token, _userLogin.Secret);

    var request = new RestRequest(Method.GET);
    request.Resource = "{version}/fileops/delete";
    request.AddParameter("version", _version, ParameterType.UrlSegment);

    request.AddParameter("path", path);
    request.AddParameter("root", "dropbox");

    var response = restClient.Execute(request);

    return response.StatusCode == System.Net.HttpStatusCode.OK;
}

Delete is pretty similar to Download, only differences is the Url, the response and this time the path is sent as a parameter instead of part of the Url. The “root” parameter is for applications that only have sandbox access (they would set this to sandbox) who only get access to a “sandbox” folder on the users dropbox account.

Upload File:

Now this is where I had the most difficulties, many “Forbidden” messages later I finally came up with the solution!

public bool UploadFile(string path, FileInfo localFile)
{
    var restClient = new RestClient("http://api-content.dropbox.com");
    //load the JsonDeserializer for all types
    restClient.ClearHandlers();
    restClient.AddHandler("*", new JsonDeserializer());

    if (!path.StartsWith("/")) path = "/" + path;

    //Get the file stream
    byte[] bytes = null;
    FileStream fs = new FileStream(localFile.FullName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
    BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(fs);
    long numBytes = localFile.Length;
    bytes = br.ReadBytes((int)numBytes);

    restClient.Authenticator = new OAuthAuthenticator(_restClient.BaseUrl, _apiKey, _appsecret, _userLogin.Token, _userLogin.Secret);

    var request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);
    request.Resource = "{version}/files/dropbox{path}";
    request.AddParameter("version", _version, ParameterType.UrlSegment);
    request.AddParameter("path", path, ParameterType.UrlSegment);
    //Need to add the "file" parameter with the file name
    request.AddParameter("file", localFile.Name);

    request.AddFile(new FileParameter { Data = bytes, FileName = localFile.Name, ParameterName = "file" });

    var response = restClient.Execute(request);

    return response.StatusCode == System.Net.HttpStatusCode.OK;
}

Ok to start with the “path” variable/parameter is the folder path (not the file).

Starts off the same with the RestClient, JsonDeserializer and the OAuthAuthenticator. We also need to read the file as a byte array. Now this request is a POST so we set that in the RestRequest object then add the version and path Url parameters. We also need to add the Filename as a “file” parameter for this request as well as adding the actual file to the Request. Execute that and: {\"result\": \"winner!\"} we just uploaded a file to dropbox!

This code was taken from my Dropbox open source .NET project called DropNet.

Dropbox API and RestSharp for a C# developer

2010-05-18T00:00:00-07:00

The Dropbox API has foiled my development of “Droppedboxx” for some time now. Mainly because the on site documentation is average for anyone not planning on developing for the iphone (dropbox, you used to be cool). Being a C# developer this was bad news for me but I decided to give it a go anyway and after a few weeks of failed attempts and a few emails to support about my issues I realised the API documentation on the dropbox website is slightly wrong.

RestSharp (What would i do without you…)
Oauth Library for C# (this one seems the easiest to use with RestSharp)
Access to the Dropbox API and an APIKey/Secret for your app

I guess I should start with the Setup of it, I started this as a Windows Mobile application but I switched to a .NET library so I could test it easier and also use RestSharp (might open source the library if I get around to it).

Login, this is possibly the easiest method if you have the right URL (the API documentation give you the wrong URL). We should be using “https://api.getdropbox.com/0/token” Code you say?

Update: Got some helpful advice about using the request.Resource property with parameters instead of a string.format.

public UserLogin Login(string email, string password)
{
    var restClient = new RestClient("https://api.getdropbox.com");
    var request = new RestRequest(Method.GET);
    request.Resource = "{version}/token";
    request.AddParameter("version", _version, ParameterType.UrlSegment);

    request.AddParameter("oauth_consumer_key", _apiKey);

    request.AddParameter("email", email);
    request.AddParameter("password", password);

    var response = restClient.Execute&lt;UserLogin&gt;(request);

    _userLogin = response.Data;

    return response.Data;
}

Seems pretty easy right? Most of thats RestSharp (with the JSONDeserializer), I then have the UserLogin class which is returned by this function.

public class UserLogin
{
    public string Token { get; set; }
    public string Secret { get; set; }
}

And now your user is logged in, you will then want to store the Users Token and Secret (storing UserLogin object would probably be better) as its used for the rest of the requests. I’ll just show you how to get the User Info as the other requests differ from the login (that is where we’ll need the Oauth stuff).

Account/Info, I’ll start with the Response classes this time…

public class AccountInfo
{
    public string Country { get; set; }
    public string Display_Name { get; set; }
    public QuotaInfo Quota_Info { get; set; }
    public string Uid { get; set; }
}

public class QuotaInfo
{
    public string Shared { get; set; }
    public string Quota { get; set; }
    public string Normal { get; set; }
}

These are the classes for RestSharp to Deserialize the JSON to. Pretty simple, this is straight off the API Documentation site. Now for the actual request…

public AccountInfo Account_Info()
{
    var restClient = new RestClient("http://api.dropbox.com");
    OAuthBase oAuth = new OAuthBase();
    string nonce = oAuth.GenerateNonce();
    string timeStamp = oAuth.GenerateTimeStamp();
    string normalizedUrl;
    string normalizedRequestParameters;
    string sig = oAuth.GenerateSignature(new Uri(string.Format("{0}/{1}/account/info", restClient.BaseUrl, _version)),
        _apiKey, _appsecret,
        _userLogin.Token, _userLogin.Secret,
        "GET", timeStamp, nonce, out normalizedUrl, out normalizedRequestParameters);
    sig = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(sig);

    var request = new RestRequest(Method.GET);
    request.Resource = string.Format("{0}/account/info", _version);
    request.AddParameter("oauth_consumer_key", _apiKey);
    request.AddParameter("oauth_token", _userLogin.Token);
    request.AddParameter("oauth_nonce", nonce);
    request.AddParameter("oauth_timestamp", timeStamp);
    request.AddParameter("oauth_signature_method", "HMAC-SHA1");
    request.AddParameter("oauth_version", "1.0");
    request.AddParameter("oauth_signature", sig);

    var response = restClient.Execute&lt;AccountInfo&gt;(request);

    return response.Data;
}

Now, this request has a different Base Url to the Login function and this uses OAuth. So firstly we create an instance of the RestSharp client and the OAutheBase classes. The OAuthBase class then handles all of the oauth parameters that we need to make the Request (nonce, timestamp, etc.). GenerateSignature is the main 1 that rolls up the request path and the tokens/secrets into a hash for extra security. As for the dropbox part of this, we dont need any extra parameters as we are just getting the logged in users Account Info. Then its just a matter of adding these parameters to the RestRequest object, notice the oauth_token is actually the UserLogin.Token that we got from our Login method?

Stay tuned for more, Tales of interest!

Update: I have added a Part 2 to this post.

MVC2 Cascading Dropdown Lists with JSON

2010-05-04T00:00:00-07:00

Today I’m going to show you how to go about creating cascading dropdown lists using JSON in MVC2. Hold onto your hats, its time to begin!

Learning ASP.NET MVC2 I thought I'd start with a relatively simple web application, this application is for keeping track of service usage across the company's physical sites (ie. Electricity, Gas, Waste, etc.).

Now first things first, I setup the Database and LinqToSql classes for my app. The table structure is MeterTypes > MeterCollections > MeterUsages. Where a MeterType is the top level (ie. Electricity, Gas, Waste, etc.) the MeterCollections are the next level down (a MeterType may contain many of these, for Electricity I have Peak and Off-Peak) and MeterUsage is the actual usage on a meter for that MeterCollection.

OK, lets get coding… We will be looking at the Create Page for the MeterUsage object, I started with the create template MVC2 gave me for this object (half of the fields are just textboxes anyway)

public ActionResult Create()
{
    var meterTypesRepo = new Models.Repo<Models.MeterType>();
    var meterTypes = from mt in meterTypesRepo.Many()
                     select new SelectListItem
                     {
                         Value = mt.MeterTypeID.ToString(),
                         Text = mt.Name
                     };
    ViewData["meterTypes"] = meterTypes;

    return View("Create");
}

Inside the Controller is where the request is handled, Now we need the data for the first list so we may as well get this here. This simply gets all the MeterTypes in the Database and converts them to SelectListItems (this is to make it easier on the page)

<div class="editor-label">
    <label for="meterTypes">Meter Type</label>
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
    <%= Html.DropDownList("meterTypes", "-- Select --")%>
</div>
<div class="editor-label">
    <label for="MeterCollectionID">Meter Collection</label>
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
    <%= Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.MeterCollectionID, new SelectList(new List<UsageInputs.Models.MeterCollection>()))%>
    <%= Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.MeterCollectionID) %>
</div>

Markup, Basic use of the Html.DropDownList() function for MeterTypes (this is where using SelectListItems comes in handy. Also added a default option “—Select –”. Then the MeterCollection Dropdown is a little different as this one actually maps to a property on my MeterUsage object so I used the Html.DropDownListFor() function and gave it an empty list so it would create the dropdown list but not have any items (they will be populated with Ajax.

Next is the Javascript, this simply calls my MeterCollections/GetList function with the ID of the MeterType from the selected item in the DropDown list.

$("#meterTypes").change(function () {
    $.ajaxSetup({ cache: false });
    var selectedItem = $(this).val();
    if (selectedItem == "" || selectedItem == 0) {
        //Do nothing or hide...?
    } else {
        $.getJSON('<%= ResolveUrl("~/MeterCollections/GetList/")%>' + $("#meterTypes > option:selected").attr("value"), function (data) {
            meterCollections = data;
            var items = "";             $.each(data, function (i, meterCollection) {
                items += "<option value='" + meterCollection.Value + "'>" + meterCollection.Text + "</option>";
            });
            $("#MeterCollectionID").html(items);
        });
    }
});

It also builds up the html for inside the dropdown list using a JQuery for each loop.

Now the last part is our GetList function to return JSON, so back to the controllers.

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult GetList(int id)
{
    var meterCollsRepo = new Models.Repo<Models.MeterCollection>();
    var meterCollections = from mc in meterCollsRepo.Many()
                           where mc.MeterTypeID == id
                           select new SelectListItem
                           {
                               Text = string.Format("{0} ({1})", mc.Name, mc.Mesurement),
                               Value = mc.MeterCollectionID.ToString()
                           };

    return Json(meterCollections, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

This function then gets all the MeterCollections that have that MeterTypeID. Here I also use the SelectListItem object as its much easier to work with in the Javascript and less work for the Serializer.

And just like that you have a Cascading DropDown List in MVC2 using Ajax.

Smack my BitSharp!

2010-04-29T00:00:00-07:00

Its an open source .NET client for the BandsInTown API.

TBODA currently have a number of web projects that focus on Live music, such as Promote.fm, and through these projects I have worked very closely with a lot of gig guide APIs. So i thought I'd make some of my code reusable but not just by me, thus BitSharp was born.

Now I'm a big fan of RestSharp (The .NET Rest Client) so BitSharp uses it for all the API requests and Responses. BitSharp is still in early development but most of the event and artist functions are working.

Now for the code to us it:

var client = new BitClient("API_KEY_HERE");

Artist artist = null;
try
{
    artist = client.Artists_Get("de11b037-d880-40e0-8901-0397c768c457");
}
catch (BitException ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine("BandsInTown Error:" + ex.Message);
    return;
}

Console.WriteLine(artist.Name);
Console.WriteLine(artist.MusicBrainzID);
Console.WriteLine("Bytes received: " + client.DataCount);

Starting by creating an instance of the BitClient with the APIKey this object is then what we use to make all the requests to the API so its a good idea to keep this at the global level that way you only need 1 instance.

Then inside the Try/Catch is where we call the Artists_Get function (this function simply gets artist info given the MusicBrainz ID). All the API Functions throw a BitException if an error is returned from the API so this exception is then caught.

Now that we have called the Artists_Get function we get an Artist object returned and its as easy as that.

The other BitSharp functions currently implemented include: (Updated)

Events_Search (Search for events either by artist(s), location or date)
Events_Daily (Returns a list of events that have been created updated or deleted in the last day)
Events_Recommended (Gets recommended events either by artist(s), location or date)
Artists_Events (Returns an artists upcoming events)
Artists_Get (Gets information on a single Artist)
Venues_Search (Search for venues by name and/or location)
Venues_Events (Returns a venues upcoming events)

You can find the source for BitSharp @ Github.

Parallel vs. Async Email performance

2010-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

Lately i have been doing some work with sending emails and I have chosen to use some of .NET4.0’s Parallel processing and the FluentEmail library.

I then got thinking about the Performance differences between using Parallel against Asynchronous so I decided to run some tests. Based of the C# Micro Performance Testing Class blog post I have written a simple app for testing this.

Firstly I created my base class for the performance tests, this will later be inherited by by different testers.

Pretty basic, methods to start and finish that set the stopwatch and the finished bool…

public abstract class PerformanceTester
{
    public TimeSpan TotalTime { get; private set; }
    public TimeSpan AverageTime { get; private set; }
    private Stopwatch _stopwatch;
    public int Iterations { get; private set; }
    public bool Finished { get; private set; }

    public PerformanceTester()
    {
        Finished = false;
    }
    public virtual void Run(int iterations)
    {
        Iterations = iterations;
        _stopwatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    }
    public void Finish()
    {
        _stopwatch.Stop();
        AverageTime = new TimeSpan(_stopwatch.Elapsed.Ticks / Iterations);
        TotalTime = _stopwatch.Elapsed;
        Finished = true;
    }
}

Now that we have the stone to build off we can create the classes for the tests we went to perform, in this case 1 for Async and 1 for Parallel (below) these 2 classes then just override the Run method and call Finish when its done. However the async class differs slightly as it has to wait for the async callback.

public class ParallelEmails : PerformanceTester
{
    public override void Run(int iterations)
    {
        base.Run(iterations);
        //do stuff here
        Parallel.For(0, iterations, i =&gt;
            {
                //send emails
                Email.From(Settings.FromAddress)
                    .To(Settings.ToAddress)
                    .Subject(Settings.Subject + "P" + i)
                    .Body(Settings.Body)
                    .UsingClient(new SmtpClient(Settings.HostAddress))
                    .Send();
            });
        //all done
        base.Finish();
    }
}
public class AsyncEmails : PerformanceTester
{
    private int _currentIteration;

    public override void Run(int iterations)
    {
        base.Run(iterations);
        //do stuff here
        for (int i = 0; i &lt; iterations; i++)
        {
            Email.From(Settings.FromAddress)
                        .To(Settings.ToAddress)
                        .Subject(Settings.Subject + "A" + i)
                        .Body(Settings.Body)
                        .UsingClient(new SmtpClient(Settings.HostAddress))
                        .SendAsync(emailCallback);
        }
    }
    private void emailCallback(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        _currentIteration = _currentIteration + 1;
        if (_currentIteration == Iterations) Finish();
    }
}

Now for some results, now I know the performance will differ depending on PC hardware so I'm testing this on 2 different PCs the first has a Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2.13GHz and the 2nd has a Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz.

Table represents my results of the tests (in milliseconds)

Emails Sent	Parallel (Dual Core)	Parallel (Quad Core)	Async (Dual Core)	Async (Quad Core)
1	6019	5716	6107	7039
8	26642	39571	34291	25638
15	59282	46897	58849	47730
20	70977	67488	62120	79164

Just a note, these tests were run from the 2 PCs on the same network with the same internet connection connecting to gmails smtp server. Of course there are other factors that would affect performance of these 2 methods but this is just to get an idea of the differences.

Read into that as much as you want but the main thing i got from it is parallel processing is better when you have more cores (which isn't really anything new at all). Good to see the difference in results though.

DK out…

Fluid.NET controls for Windows Mobile 6

2010-04-20T00:00:00-07:00

Lately I have been making an application for Windows mobile but I am pretty bad with design so I was looking for a control toolkit and came across the Fluid.NET controls, which is an open source control toolkit for Windows Mobile. Now there wasn't too much documentation on the site and it hadn't been updated for a while but they had a pretty decent looking example application which they offered the source for.

I based my project off their example, took me a while to figure out how to use some of their controls but now i have a bit more of an idea and i thought I'd share it.

Basically I'm trying to use the Fluid.NET listbox control to display the file system (so i can select a folder).

Then I created a new Fluid Template this is the class used by the ListBox to populate the items in the list. Item layout goes in the InitControl() method then the actual content of the Item (In my case its based off a DirectoryInfo object) goes in the OnBindValue() method.

public class AddFolderTemplate : FluidTemplate
{
    private FluidLabel nameLabel;
    private FluidLabel secondaryLabel;

    protected override void InitControl()
    {
        base.InitControl();
        this.Bounds = new Rectangle(0, 0, 240, 64);
        nameLabel = new FluidLabel("", 3, 0, 228, 64 - 3);
        Controls.Add(l);
        secondaryLabel = new FluidLabel("", 8, 62 - 12, 224, 12);
        Controls.Add(l);
    }
    protected override void OnBindValue(object value)
    {
        var folder = value as DirectoryInfo;
        if (folder != null)
        {
            nameLabel.Text = folder.Name;
            secondaryLabel.Text = folder.FullName;
        }
    }
}

After I had the Template done I then created my listbox class (inheriting from the ListBoxBase) This class didnt need to do too much as most of the work is done in its base and the panel it goes in.

public class AddFolderListBox : ListBoxBase
{
    private NotifyList folders;
    public event EventHandler FolderSelected;

    protected override void InitControl()
    {
        base.InitControl();
        ItemHeight = 32;

        ItemTemplate = new AddFolderTemplate();
    }
    public NotifyList Folders
    {
        get { return folders; }
        set
        {
            if (folders != value)
            {
                folders = value;
                DataSource = value;
            }
        }
    }
    ...
}

Now that we’ve got the classes done, time to put them to use. I have created a panel for browsing through the file system. All we need to do here is create an instance of our Listbox control and add a list of folders to the Folders Property.

Controls.Add(lsbFolders);
CurrentDir = new DirectoryInfo("/");
lsbFolders.Folders = MakeDirList(CurrentDir.GetDirectories());

This then loads all the folders in the devices root into the listbox. I have also added to the OnItemClick event to go deeper into the file system and a back button to go back to the parent directory.