Developer Stuff

Since word of it first spread, and since seeing a demo of it while I was in Redmond back in October, I've been very excited about the ASP.NET MVC Framework. And since its initial CPT release, I've been messing around with the ASP.NET MVC Framework quite a bit. Though I did have some trouble (like getting it to run in IIS7 on Vista—never got it working, even with help from Phil Haack), I really like what I've seen, and can't wait to begin using it in production. Now, it looks like it will soon be one step closer  to being production-ready.

In a few weeks, there will be an ASP.NET MVC Mix Preview Release, which will address a number of this, as discussed by Scott Guthrie in his blog post titled ASP.NET MVC Framework Road-Map Update. Of all the goodness that he mentions, one thing stood out:

We have also factored out the URL routing infrastructure from the rest of the MVC framework with this preview, which enables us to use it for other non-MVC features in ASP.NET (including ASP.NET Dynamic Data and ASP.NET Web Forms).

As someone who uses URL Rewriting quite extensively, this is great news! I can't wait to see what I can do with the URL routing infrastructure and my existing Web Forms based applications.

	<p>One of the reasons I moved to a <a title="My new host - ReliableSite.net" href="http://reliablesite.net" target="_blank">new host</a> is because they were already offering ASP.NET 3.5 on their servers (and the price was right). The next logical step, after moving this site to the new host, seemed to be moving this site to ASP.NET 3.5. In order to try some new things out with LINQ to XML, and VB 9, that has now happened. </p>
	<p>The first order of business was to try using LINQ to XML to pull in an <a title="My RSS feed at ma.gnolia." href="http://ma.gnolia.com/rss/full/people/BryanJD" target="_blank">RSS</a> or <a title="My Atom feed at ma.gnolia." href="http://ma.gnolia.com/atom/full/people/BryanJD" target="_blank">Atom</a> feed of <a title="My bookmarks at ma.gnolia." href="http://ma.gnolia.com/people/BryanJD/" target="_blank">my bookmarks</a> at <a title="ma.gnolia.com" href="http://ma.gnolia.com/" target="_blank">ma.gnolia</a>, and utilize that data in the <a title="Links, links, links" href="http://bryan.daneman.org/links/" target="_blank">Links section</a> of this site. It was ridiculously easy. A couple of lines of code to get a list of all the distinct tags, and a few more lines to grab the title and URL of each bookmark, based on the tag selected. Right now, I am just displaying both in simple lists (using the new ListView control, also very nice), but I will be spiffing it up and adding some additional functionality soon.</p>
	<p>Now, since my day job involves working with XML most all of the time, I am very tempted to bring some of my existing code into the world of LINQ to XML.</p>
	<p>For more information on LINQ, check out <a title="Scott Guthrie's blog" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/" target="_blank">Scott Guthrie's</a> <a title="LINQ related posts by Scott Guthrie" href="http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/tags/LINQ/default.aspx" target="_blank">LINQ related posts</a>.</p>
	<h5>Additional LINQ Links:</h5>
	<ul>
			<li>
					<a class="" title="The LINQ Project" href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa904594.aspx" target="">The LINQ Project</a>
			</li>
			<li>
					<a class="" title="LINQ for XML Data" href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb308960.aspx" target="">LINQ for XML Data</a>  

I know that there hasn't been much action here in the last...well...long time, and of my 3 faithful readers from the site's heyday, maybe one remains, but I thought you might like to know that I'm going to Tech-Ed. Julie is going, too, and we are both really looking forward to the trip. If you're going, shoot me a note via the Contact page.

VS 2005 Beta 1 is now up on MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

Just thought I'd give my previous post a little .NET twist.

If you've followed this weblog for any length of time, then you know that I track all referrers via an HTTPModule that I wrote a year ago.  What you don't know is that I recently implemented a way to “misdirect” certain referring sites, such as those responsible for referrer log spam.  At first I thought about just adding the sooner fan site that was responsible for the land thief traffic to this list, but then I thought of something else -- something a little more fun.  Now my Referrer HTTPModule intercepts sites with “sooner” in the hostname and displays an intermediate page before allowing them to access the post they so eagerly want to read.

Copy and  paste this Url into your browser (http://www.soonerfans.firstdownsports.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9144 - sorry not going to link to their site), then follow the link on that page back to my site to see what I mean.  Now for most of you, the humor will be lost, but Longhorn fans, as well as anyone who despises ou, you'll get a kick out of it.

Just a reminder that this is ASP.NET Webcast Week...

"Learn about ASP.NET from the experts! These free events are live and interactive. Live code demos and attendees asking in depth engaging questions are all part of this live event. This is a great way to get educated, engaged, and enlightened on Microsoft developer tools."

I was in the middle of registering for an account at MyDomain.com when I came upon some poorly coded form validation.  One of the fields is the answer to a secret question.  The user gets to choose the secret question from a list 7 options -- I chose one that asks “What is your father's middle name?”  The problem I have is that the validation requires that the answer must be at least 6 characters -- my father's middle name does not meet this requirement.  Come to think of it, besides my own middle name, no one else in my immediate family has a middle name 6 characters or longer. 

Fortunately, I can get around this by choosing a different question (assuming I don't run into similar issues), or I can elect to not have a secret question, and thus no need for a secret answer...I wonder if selecting this option will still require a word of 6 or more characters...let's see...

Ok, it didn't balk at not having a secret answer, but upon submitting the form it did tell me that I don't have permission to access the server.  Great.  So much for trying them out for their free DNS services.  I guess I get what I pay for.

I am wondering if anyone out there has done any development with Documentum's Content Server and .NET?

I know that they've developed a Primary Interop Assembly for building applications using the Documentum Foundation Classes (DFC), but I've yet to give it a try. 

This next week, we will be wrapping up an engagement with a member of Documentum's consulting services, and I will finally be able to dig into some code.  So I am interested in hearing experiences from anyone who is already using .NET with Documentum.

I just came across the following on the MSDN Subscriber Downloads site:

Special Access to Longhorn and Whidbey PDC Release Code

Active MSDN Operating Systems, Professional, Enterprise, and Universal subscribers may request a set of software distributed at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2003 (PDC), including the preview versions of the "Longhorn" operating system and SDK, and Visual Studio "Whidbey".

Eligible MSDN Subscribers can request the previews by calling MSDN Customer Service. Certified Partners and Breadth ISV / Empower partners should contact their respective Service Centers for further assistance. Note that the preview package contains DVD media, and a DVD drive is required. Please allow 3-4 weeks for fulfillment.

Yesterday, I came across a nice looking browser based RSS feed read -- MyBlogRoll.com, by Julien Cheyssial.  It is in the early beta stages, but looks very promising.