Making a server-side click work when Javascript is disabled

April 21, 2006 Leave a comment
A client’s accessibility guidelines stipulated that a particular asp.net website was supposed to work, even when javascript was disabled. ASP.NET relies heavily on __doPostback to perform its postbacks, and thus all server-side links are disabled when JS is disabled.
 
So, I did a workaround, with a function that can modify an asp.net linkButton so that it will work – albeit in degraded mode when JS is disabled
 

public static void MakeNoJSSafe(LinkButton lb,string alternativeURL)

{

     string strJSLink = "javascript:__doPostBack(‘" + lb.ClientID + "’,”)";

     lb.Attributes.Add("onClick",strJSLink + ";this.href=’#’");

     lb.Attributes["href"] = alternativeURL;

     return;

}

 

For me, an hour of trial-and-error, for you, a minutes cut & paste.

Please credit me, if you use this script.

 

Categories: Uncategorized

Internet Voicemail service set live

April 15, 2006 Leave a comment
Send Voicemail to landline phones using an web-based interface, check out www.sms-txt.co.uk/voicemail.aspx
 
The idea behind it, is to have an automated appointment reminder service, where organisations can post reminders on the website, and then at a scheduled time, a phone call will be made to that person, reminding him or her about their appointment.
 
Other applications could be service level notifications such as "Your water service will be cut off from 12 until 2 today" etc. – Or as identity verification for financial institutions.
 
Try it out!
 
 
 
Categories: Uncategorized

Extract email address with SQL UDF

April 15, 2006 1 comment
This is a nice little user defined function that can extract email addresses from a block of text. I got the split function from planet-source-code, just to give credit where due.
 
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.Split(@String nvarchar(4000), @Delimiter char(1))
RETURNS @Results TABLE (Items nvarchar(4000))
AS
    BEGIN
    DECLARE @INDEX INT
    DECLARE @SLICE nvarchar(4000)
    — HAVE TO SET TO 1 SO IT DOESNT EQUAL Z
    —     ERO FIRST TIME IN LOOP
    SELECT @INDEX = 1
    — following line added 10/06/04 as null
    —      values cause issues
    IF @String IS NULL RETURN
    WHILE @INDEX !=0
        BEGIN 
         — GET THE INDEX OF THE FIRST OCCURENCE OF THE SPLIT CHARACTER
         SELECT @INDEX = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter,@STRING)
         — NOW PUSH EVERYTHING TO THE LEFT OF IT INTO THE SLICE VARIABLE
         IF @INDEX !=0
          SELECT @SLICE = LEFT(@STRING,@INDEX – 1)
         ELSE
          SELECT @SLICE = @STRING
         — PUT THE ITEM INTO THE RESULTS SET
         INSERT INTO @Results(Items) VALUES(@SLICE)
         — CHOP THE ITEM REMOVED OFF THE MAIN STRING
         SELECT @STRING = RIGHT(@STRING,LEN(@STRING) – @INDEX)
         — BREAK OUT IF WE ARE DONE
         IF LEN(@STRING) = 0 BREAK
    END
    RETURN
END
CREATE FUNCTION get_email
 (  @TextContainingEmail varchar(1000)  )
RETURNS varchar(1000)
AS
BEGIN
 declare @retval varchar(1000)
 select top 1 @retval=items from dbo.split(@TextContainingEmail,’ ‘)
 where items like ‘%@%’
 return @retval
END
 
Then to use it, you can call
 
select dbo.get_email(‘my email address is bob@microsoft.com’‘)
 
 
Categories: Uncategorized

Export Google Search Results to CSV

April 15, 2006 Leave a comment
I just wrote a handly function which uses the Google API to do a search, then export the results in CSV, for easy import into a database for further processing. Be aware, that this will probably max out your quota with one call, so be careful with it.
 

public void GoogleSearchToCSV(string SearchString, string FileName)

{

GoogleSearchService.GoogleSearchService gss = new GoogleSearchService.GoogleSearchService();

string CSV = "";

try

{

for(int i=170;i<10000;i+=10)

{

GoogleSearchService.GoogleSearchResult gsr = gss.doGoogleSearch("L3Pyyh5QFHKU740wXUu0/aBu17loGATB",SearchString,0,10,

false,"",false,"","","");

foreach(GoogleSearchService.ResultElement reSearch in gsr.resultElements)

{

CSV += reSearch.title.Replace(",","").Replace("n","") + ",";

CSV += reSearch.snippet.Replace(",","").Replace("n","") + ",";

CSV += reSearch.URL.Replace(",","").Replace("n","") + "n";

}

Debug.Write("Progress:" + i.ToString());

}

}

catch(Exception ex)

{

Debug.Write(ex.ToString());

}

FileStream fsOut = new FileStream(FileName,FileMode.Create);

StreamWriter swOut = new StreamWriter(fsOut);

swOut.Write(CSV);

fsOut.Close();

}

 
Categories: Uncategorized

Writing a C# Application without a user interface

April 12, 2006 Leave a comment
I was looking to write a C# program which had no particular need for a user interface. My first stop was to develop a windows service, however, this proved too difficult to debug, so I decided to re-implement it as a windows forms app, with the form removed.
 
This application needed to poll a connection, every 5 seconds, and run idefinitely.
 

public System.Timers.Timer tmrPoll = new System.Timers.Timer();

[STAThread]

static void Main()

{

VoiceMailMain vmmInstance =

new VoiceMailMain();

vmmInstance.tmrPoll.Enabled =

true;

vmmInstance.tmrPoll.Interval = 5000;

vmmInstance.tmrPoll.Elapsed += new

System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(vmmInstance.tmrPoll_Tick);

System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.Suspend();

}

public

void tmrPoll_Tick(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)

{ … and magic happens … }

 

Simple when you know how!

 
Categories: Uncategorized

No mapping between account names and security IDs

April 12, 2006 7 comments
When installing a windows service, using installutil, it prompted for a username, and password, and
since my Administrator user didn’t have a password, I got the following error:
 
System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: No mapping between account names and security IDs was done
 
After reading a few posts, I found a handy tip to solve this
 
Add this to the ProjectInstaller.cs file (in InitializeComponent)
this.serviceProcessInstaller1.Account = System.ServiceProcess.ServiceAccount.LocalSystem;
 
Et viola, it installs without prompting for a password.
 
 
 
Categories: Uncategorized

Uploading a file via a web service

April 11, 2006 Leave a comment
When you think uploading files with a web service, you may immediately think about using DIME and WSE 2.0 etc. However, I believe there is an easier way – depending on your application, I presume, but this approach may be useful.
 
I wanted to be able to allow people use standard File upload from a webpage
<input type="file"> – and then have the output of this passed to a webservice. – Also, I wanted to do it generically, so that if an application were to consume the webservice, the developer would not have to figure out how to cast a stream to a HttpPostedFile class.
 
Therefore, I used a very simple technique, use a byte array as a parameter to the webMethod.
– I then wanted to save the byte array as a file, with a random name, in the same path as the webservice –

string strPath = HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables["APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH"].ToString();

string strFileName = (Guid.NewGuid()).ToString()+".wav";

FileStream fsWave =

new FileStream(strPath + strFileName,FileMode.Create);

fsWave.Write(WaveData,0,WaveData.Length);

fsWave.Close();

 

Where WaveData was my Byte array.

 

Then when consuming this service, from an ASP.NET page, I used this code

HttpPostedFile hpfWave = this.AudioFile.PostedFile;

int intFileLen = hpfWave.ContentLength;

byte[] bWaveData = new byte[intFileLen];

hpfWave.InputStream.Read(bWaveData, 0, intFileLen);

strMessage = vmWebService.UploadAudio(bWaveData);

 

Where AudioFile is my Input type=file on the web page, and vmWebService was my webservice.

 

If you’re interested in knowing where this is leading, check out www.sms-txt.co.uk in a few days!

 

Categories: Uncategorized

SQL performance: Nested select statements.

March 24, 2006 Leave a comment
This is a tip for restructuring nested select statements to make them run faster in SQL server. I can’t vouch for this in all situations, but It shortened a long SQL query for me from 1 hour to 7 minutes.
 
Where you have
Select * from xyz where id in
 (
   Select * from abc where id in
   (
    select id from def
   }
 )
 
I recommend re-writing as
 
   Select * into #abcdef from abc where id in
   (
    select id from def
   }
 
Select * from xyz where id in
 (
   select id from #abcdef
 )
 
 
Categories: Uncategorized

Charset reverting to Windows standard

March 23, 2006 Leave a comment
On Internet eplorer 6 SP1, If you perform a Response.Flush() before any content goes to the page, then the charset will revert to Windows. Regardless if the charset is set in the HTML.
 
If you put this line in Page_load, it should fix the problem
Response.Charset = "UTF-8";
Categories: Uncategorized

Differences between CHOICE command in Batch files

March 22, 2006 Leave a comment
Batch files may be arcane, but they serve well for quick & nasty build scripts. One point to note that I fell into a trap today is the difference in the implementation of the CHOICE command (prompting the user for input) between Windows 9x and Windows 2000/XP. – Alot of documentation on Batch files is quite old, and thus doesn’t mark any difference
 
Windows 9x:
CHOICE /C:123 /N Please choose a menu option.
IF ERRORLEVEL == 3 GOTO LIVE
IF ERRORLEVEL == 2 GOTO BACKUP
IF ERRORLEVEL == 1 GOTO LOCAL
EXIT
 
Windows 2000/XP:
set choice=
set /p choice=Please choose a menu option.
if not ‘%choice%’==” set choice=%choice:~0,1%
if ‘%choice%’==’1’ goto LOCAL
if ‘%choice%’==’2’ goto BACKUP
if ‘%choice%’==’3’ goto LIVE
EXIT
 
Categories: Uncategorized