A URL Friendly Guid, but Not Shorter…

I have a website that gets thousands upon thousands of hits a day.  And I use guids to identifiy everything.  So I needed something to show Guids in the URLS.  The best thing I found at that moment was Mads Kristensen’s Shorter URL Friendly Guid. 

Mads basically converts the Guid to base 64.  For a small website of sorts, this isn’t a bad idea.  But overtime and larger websites there will be more and more Guids represented.  After coming up with several errors in my site, I decided to investigate.  When converting to Base64 with Guids, I started to notice some slight loss of the Guid.  When I say slight, I mean one in every 2000 users had shown errors.  To me this isn’t acceptable by any means.  One user can destroy an entire website by talking slander so I was in need of a fix. 

So I threw out Mads idea and went searching for something different.  Its not uncommon to still use Guids in URL’s.  With the Dashes and all.  Microsoft, Flickr, Yahoo, Google, and some various other third party websites still use them in their URLs.  But I didn’t want the dashes.  I wanted just the numbers and letters.  Dashes could some day cause a problem, but not just numbers and letters.  So I decided to get rid of the dashes.  So here is the final code to use Guids as Urls.

I have a Guid extension class in C#.  One method is as follows:

public static string RemoveDashes(this Guid guid)
{
 return guid.ToString().Replace("-","");
}

This method gets called when ever I convert a Guid to a URL.  Whats nice about this, is the way I convert the Guid back with dashes.  No real fiddling with strings.  All that needs to be done is this:

Guid guid = new Guid("c9a646d39c614cb7bfcdee2522c8f633");

And that automatically puts the dashes back into the system.

Binding LINQ to Silverlight Listview

I hate having to look deep and hard and then when I don’t find anything on Google, I move into uncharted territory.  So here is some code on how to bind a Silverlight Listview with LINQ.

One point, I don’t care that much about making this that presentable, so here is what I wrote.  The LINQ could probably be built better, but if you know what I work or who I work for, you know that all I build is Demo Apps.  So this won’t be production, its just showing the fact that it can be done. This Demo shows Hurricanes in a Listview.  The list of hurricanes were pulled from the NOAA site.

A few things to point out:

1. I pulled all the hurricanes from the DB and then started working on them.  So everything is already in cache.
2. When doing Hierarchical data tempates, the ITEMSOURCE and ITEM templates are point to the the next lower level of the Template.  So if you look in the XAML, you will see the the item source and item templates point to the next layer down. I didn’t know this.

C# Service:

public class HurricaneServices : IHurricaneServices
    {
        public List<HurricanesClass> GetHurricanes()
        {
            var hurricanes = HurricanesClass.GetCachedHurricanes();

             return(from xx in hurricanes
                      group xx by xx.Hurricane_Name into gg
                      orderby gg.FirstOrDefault().DateTime_Reported descending
                      where gg.Key != null
                      select new HurricanesClass
                      {
                          Hurricane_Name = gg.Key.Replace(".mxd", ""),
                          Types = (from yy in hurricanes
                                   where yy.Hurricane_Name == gg.Key
                                   group yy by yy.Type into zz
                                   where zz.Key != null
                                   select new HurricanesClass
                                   {
                                       Type = zz.Key,
                                       Services = (from cc in hurricanes
                                                   where cc.Type == zz.Key
                                                   where cc.Hurricane_Name == gg.Key
                                                   orderby cc.DateTime_Reported descending
                                                   select new HurricanesClass
                                                   {
                                                       DateTime_Reported = cc.DateTime_Reported,
                                                       Webservice_Name = cc.Webservice_Name,
                                                       Webservice_URL = cc.Webservice_URL,
                                                   }).ToList()
                                   }).ToList()
                      }).ToList();
        }
    }

Here is the XAML it is binded to:

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <Grid.Resources>
            <sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate x:Key="HurricaneServices">
                <StackPanel MouseLeftButtonDown="StackPanel_MouseLeftButtonDown">
                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Webservice_Name}"></TextBlock>
                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=DateTime_Reported}"></TextBlock>
                    <TextBlock x:Name="wsURL" Text="{Binding Path=Webservice_URL}"></TextBlock>
                </StackPanel>
            </sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate>
            <sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate x:Key="HurricaneTypes" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Services}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource HurricaneServices}">
                <StackPanel>
                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Type}"></TextBlock>
                </StackPanel>
            </sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate>
            <sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate x:Key="HurricaneNames" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Types}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource HurricaneTypes}">
                <StackPanel>
                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Hurricane_Name}"></TextBlock>
                </StackPanel>
            </sdk:HierarchicalDataTemplate>
        </Grid.Resources>
        <sdk:TreeView x:Name="mytree" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource HurricaneNames}" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Height="300" Width="800" Background="Gray">
        </sdk:TreeView>
    </Grid>

And last but not least, the Binding Syntax.  The code behind of the XAML page.

     public HurricaneData()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            HurricaneService.HurricaneServicesClient ws = new HurricaneService.HurricaneServicesClient();
            ws.GetHurricanesCompleted += new EventHandler<HurricaneService.GetHurricanesCompletedEventArgs>(webService_GetCustomersByLastNameCompleted);
            ws.GetHurricanesAsync();
                    }
        void webService_GetCustomersByLastNameCompleted(object sender, HurricaneService.GetHurricanesCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            mytree.ItemsSource = e.Result;
        }

WCF Silverlight 4 Services error - The contract name could not be found in the list of contracts implemented by the service

When developing WCF silverlight 4 services to contact data, I received the following error:

The contract name '’ could not be found in the list of contracts implemented by the service ‘’.

I wanted to just give a heads up to those wondering whats going on.  Make sure when you add the endpoint, your contract points to the Interface instead of just the service it self.  For example:

 <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="PortalSilverlight.Web.Services.ServicesBehavior" name="PortalSilverlight.Web.Services.Services">
        <endpoint address="http://localhost:3454/Services/Services.svc" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="PortalSilverlight.Web.Services.IServices" />
      </service>
</services>

Notice in the contract attribute I am pointing towards the IService instead of just the Services.svc file.  Took me a couple of hours to figure this out.

Programmatically Open ShapeFiles with ArcObjects

All,

Along with my last few posts, I received an Error when trying to open shapefiles with Arcobjects. Thought I would post the problem incase someone else ran into it.

Here is the code to open shapefiles with Arcobjects.

IWorkspaceFactory workspaceFactoryShape = new ESRI.ArcGIS.DataSourcesFile.ShapefileWorkspaceFactoryClass(); //creates a shape factory to pull the shape and create the feature class.
IFeatureWorkspace featureWorkspace = (IFeatureWorkspace)workspaceFactoryShape.OpenFromFile(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(file), 0); //Opens the Shape file.
IFeatureLayer featureLayer = new FeatureLayerClass();
featureLayer.FeatureClass = featureWorkspace.OpenFeatureClass(System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(file)); //opens the featurclass from the shapefile

Two things to point out.

1. The openfromFile method will throw the error:  HRESULT: 0x80040258 if you don’t get the directory in which the shape files are located.  Its not looking for the actual .shp file.  Its looking for where the shape files reside. 
2. The OpenFeatureclass method is where you give just the file name of the shape file.  Don’t include the .shp extenstion nor the file path.  Remember it already has the file path I stated in the first point.

Hope this helps someone out! I know I struggled with it for about 2 hours…

How to Download a File in C#

The first example shows how to download a file synchronously and the second, asynchronously.  Just a quick post.  Thought it would help someone out that.

using System.Net;

WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
webClient.DownloadFile("http://yahoo.com/file.txt", @"c:\file.txt");

This one shows how to download a file in C# asynchronously.

private void btnDownload_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
  webClient.DownloadFileCompleted += new AsyncCompletedEventHandler(Completed);
  webClient.DownloadProgressChanged += new DownloadProgressChangedEventHandler(ProgressChanged);
  webClient.DownloadFileAsync(new Uri("http://mysite.com/myfile.txt"), @"c:\myfile.txt");
}

private void ProgressChanged(object sender, DownloadProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
  progressBar.Value = e.ProgressPercentage;
}

private void Completed(object sender, AsyncCompletedEventArgs e)
{
  MessageBox.Show("Download completed!");
}

How to publish a ArcMap to the ArcGIS Server…

So after tons of searching and bothersome problems, It took a while to find code, but none could be found.  So I wanted to make sure the end example was easily findable on the internet next time.  Hope this saves some time of another programmer out there!

This code will publish an .MXD map to the ArcGIS server.  And turn it on to be used right away.

 //The following C# code shows how to connect to the ArcGIS Server called "     ",
        //and use the IServerObjectConfiguration interface to set the properties of
        //a new server object configuration. The new configuration is created and
        // added to the server with the 
        //CreateConfiguration and AddConfiguration methods on IServerObjectAdmin.
        /// <summary>
        /// This publishes a Map to the ArcGIS Server
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="serverMachineName">Servername</param>
        /// <param name="serviceName">Service name in which you want to call it</param>
        /// <param name="pathToMap">File Path to the .mxd map.</param>
        /// <param name="format">Which format you would like.  Look in code.</param>
        public static void AddMapService(string serverMachineName, string serviceName, string pathToMap, int format)
        {
            // Initialize ESRI licenses
            IAoInitialize aoInit = new AoInitializeClass();
            aoInit.Initialize(esriLicenseProductCode.esriLicenseProductCodeArcServer);

            //define paths for the onlineresource property in the extension properties
            string resource = "http://" + serverMachineName + "/ArcGIS/services/" + serviceName + "/MapServer/WMSServer";
            string resourceKML = "http://" + serverMachineName + "/ArcGIS/services/" + serviceName + "/MapServer/KMLServer";
            string resourceWCS = "http://" + serverMachineName + "/ArcGIS/services/" + serviceName + "/MapServer/WCSServer";
            string resourceWFS = "http://" + serverMachineName + "/ArcGIS/services/" + serviceName + "/MapServer/WFSServer";

            //  Connect to the ArcGIS server called  serverMachineName (string) .   
            IGISServerConnection pGISServerConnection = new GISServerConnectionClass();
            // example :  pGISServerConnection.Connect("llv38-tasc65688");   
            pGISServerConnection.Connect(serverMachineName);

            // create the new configuration
            IServerObjectAdmin pServerObjectAdmin = pGISServerConnection.ServerObjectAdmin;
            IServerObjectConfiguration pConfiguration = pServerObjectAdmin.CreateConfiguration();
            IServerObjectConfiguration2 pConfiguration2 = (IServerObjectConfiguration2)pConfiguration;
            IServerObjectConfiguration3 pConfiguration3 = (IServerObjectConfiguration3)pConfiguration;

            // set the   General Configuration Settings
            pConfiguration.Name = serviceName;           //  the name of this configuration
            pConfiguration.TypeName = "MapServer";   // the type of server object to be created
            pConfiguration.IsPooled = true;
            pConfiguration.MinInstances = 1;
            pConfiguration.MaxInstances = 2;
            pConfiguration.WaitTimeout = 60;
            pConfiguration.UsageTimeout = 600;
            pConfiguration.StartupType = esriStartupType.esriSTAutomatic;
            pConfiguration.IsolationLevel = esriServerIsolationLevel.esriServerIsolationHigh;

            //  Set the configuration Properties of the MapServer Object
            IPropertySet pProps = pConfiguration.Properties;
            pProps.SetProperty("FilePath", pathToMap);    // required property
            pProps.SetProperty("OutputDir", "c:\\arcgisserver\\arcgisoutput");
            string virtualOutDir = " http://" + serverMachineName + "/arcgisoutput";
            pProps.SetProperty("VirtualOutputDir", virtualOutDir);
            pProps.SetProperty("MaxImageHeight", "2048");
            pProps.SetProperty("MaxRecordCount", "500");
            pProps.SetProperty("MaxBufferCount", "100");
            pProps.SetProperty("MaxImageWidth", "2048");
            pConfiguration.Properties = pProps;

            //  Set the info segment of the MapServer Object  properties
            IPropertySet info = pConfiguration2.Info;
            info.SetProperty("WebEnabled", "true");
            info.SetProperty("WebCapabilities", "Map,Query,Data");
            pConfiguration2.Info = info;

            //  Set the recycle properties of the MapSrver object
            IPropertySet pProp = pConfiguration.RecycleProperties;
            pProp.SetProperty("StartTime", "1:00 AM");    //   start recycling at midnight
            pProp.SetProperty("Interval", "86400");      //  every 24 hours
            pConfiguration.RecycleProperties = pProp;

            bool enabled;
            if (format == 1 || format == 15)
            {   //Set WMS extension Properties
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionEnabled("WmsServer", true);

                IPropertySet pExtensionProps = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionProperties("WmsServer");
                pExtensionProps.SetProperty("OnlineResource", resource);
                pExtensionProps.SetProperty("Name", "WMS");
                pExtensionProps.SetProperty("Title", serviceName);
                // pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionProperties("WmsServer", pExtensionProps);

                IPropertySet pProp2 = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionInfo("WmsServer");
                pProp2.SetProperty("WebEnabled", "true");
                pProp2.SetProperty("WebCapabilities", "Map,Query,Data");
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionInfo("WmsServer", pProp2);
            }

            if (format == 2 || format == 15)
            {    //  Set KML extension properties
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionEnabled("KMLServer", true);

                IPropertySet pPropKML = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionInfo("KMLServer");
                pPropKML.SetProperty("WebEnabled", "true");
                pPropKML.SetProperty("WebCapabilities", "SingleImage,SeparateImages,Vectors");
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionInfo("KMLServer", pPropKML);

                IPropertySet pExtensionPropKML = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionProperties("KMLServer");
                pExtensionPropKML.SetProperty("ImageSize", "1024");
                pExtensionPropKML.SetProperty("FeatureLimit", "1000000");
                pExtensionPropKML.SetProperty("Dpi", "96");

                pExtensionPropKML.SetProperty("MinRefreshPeriod", "30");
                pExtensionPropKML.SetProperty("UseDefaultSnippets", "false");
                //       pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionProperties("KMLServer", pExtensionPropKML);
            }

            if (format == 4 || format == 15)
            {   //Set WCS extension Properties
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionEnabled("WcsServer", true);

                IPropertySet pExtensionPropsWCS = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionProperties("WcsServer");
                pExtensionPropsWCS.SetProperty("OnlineResource", resourceWCS);
                pExtensionPropsWCS.SetProperty("Name", "WCS");
                pExtensionPropsWCS.SetProperty("Title", serviceName);
                // pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionProperties("WcsServer", pExtensionPropsWCS);

                IPropertySet pPropWCS = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionInfo("WcsServer");
                pPropWCS.SetProperty("WebEnabled", "true");
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionInfo("WcsServer", pPropWCS);
            }


            if (format == 8 || format == 15)
            {   //Set WFS Extension Properties
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionEnabled("WfsServer", true);

                IPropertySet pExtensionPropsWFS = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionProperties("WfsServer");
                pExtensionPropsWFS.SetProperty("OnlineResource", resourceWFS);
                pExtensionPropsWFS.SetProperty("Name", "WFS");
                pExtensionPropsWFS.SetProperty("Title", serviceName);
                pExtensionPropsWFS.SetProperty("AppSchemaURI", resourceWFS);
                pExtensionPropsWFS.SetProperty("AppSchemaPrefix", serviceName);
                //     pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionProperties("WfsServer", pExtensionPropsWFS);

                IPropertySet pPropWFS = pConfiguration2.get_ExtensionInfo("WfsServer");
                pPropWFS.SetProperty("WebEnabled", "true");
                pConfiguration2.set_ExtensionInfo("WfsServer", pPropWFS);
            }

            //' add the configuration to  the server
            pServerObjectAdmin.AddConfiguration(pConfiguration2);
            pServerObjectAdmin.StartConfiguration(serviceName, "MapServer");
        }  //  end method

How to create Feature Layer from a Shapefile in C#

I hate when I can't find things easily on the web.  Things are soo buried on the ESRI website its ridiculous.  So I am going to start posting simple solutions and complaints if I find any.  So thank you ESRI for being so hard to code for.

Complaint Number 1 about ESRI's site - When giving examples or even Class Objects, you don't show the namespaces.  That leaves us developers looking for where classes are buried in several different namespaces.  This is a problem that needs to be fixed.

So on to the example:

using ESRI.ArcGIS.Geodatabase;

IWorkspaceFactory workspaceFactory = new ESRI.ArcGIS.DataSourcesFile.ShapefileWorkspaceFactoryClass();
IFeatureWorkspace featureWorkspace = (IFeatureWorkspace)workspaceFactory.OpenFromFile(location, 0);
IFeatureClass featureClass = featureWorkspace.OpenFeatureClass(shapefilename);
Console.WriteLine("There are {0} features in the {1} feature class", featureClass.FeatureCount(new QueryFilterClass()), featureClass.AliasName);

Make Note that the variable location is does NOT include the file name.

For example: "C:\Users\Desktop\Newfolder" and NOT "C:\Users\Desktop\Newfolder\blah.shp"

Thats it!

Hope this will help someone down the road.  It took me about an hour to find it on the ESRI website.

How to Boost Performance of Your ASP.NET Web App.

I have a website over at http://www.utopiapimp.com with over 15k users and it was getting bogged down a ton by database hits.  I needed to speed the site up because of the DB calls.  So I threw a ton of stuff into Cache, but that didn't speed the site up enough.  So I looked for faster ways to do these things and wanted to give a shout out to this site that helped drastically.

Here is the link to the Article. I suggest you take a look at it if you wanted to do the same. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/10ASPNetPerformance.aspx?msg=2809164 

Scott 

How to Remove a Workplace or Local Path with TFS

I had an error in Team Foundation server saying something like one of my folders were already mapped to this local path from another server.  So I looked around and couldn't find a fix for it on the internet.  I had to figure this one out my self so I thought I would share my findings.

In order to remove this mapping from TFS because maybe you deleted the folder on your desktop a long time ago.  You need to go to File -> Source Control -> Manage Workplaces. 

From there you have the option to remove any mappings you wish in TFS.  Just thought I would throw that out there.  Took a while for me to find it and thought I should share it.

Yet Another Forum Controls: Top Posts and Last Post Controls

In my time of developing apps, I love YAF and would love to see more development for it. So in helping out with the Forum, I wanted to contribute and I imagine I will be working on more controls later down the road for YAF.

I built these controls for the third party application I host at Utopiapimp.com.  It is used for the online game at Utopia.Swirve.com.  Its a GREAT game which challenges your intellect.  It is completely text based so requires a lot of thinking.  If you ever decided to give it a try, look me up.  Im around the game and the site.  I am hooked on it.

In using these controls, I ask that you help out with YAF. Not just in downloading these controls, but building your own stuff!

To YAF/Control Developers: There are two problems with these controls. I am using LINQ as a segway with connecting to the database. So if you would like to do something different, please replace the "DataContexts" with something else for connecting to the database. Along with the Execute Query part needs to be replaced as well.
THE OTHER PROBLEM: YAF URL Re-directions STINK. They just don't work outside the forum. So if your posting any of this on a page other than the default page, the page needs to be replaced with the default page.

To All other control users: These controls can either be spit out as tables or Lists. Go to the code behind and comment out the Table, but by default it displays the list.

Attrributes:
1. PostCount: Default = 10, but can be set to anything.
2. BoardName: Default is no board name. Its just all boards, but can be set to any board name.
3. Class: This is the CSSClass.
4. Row class and alternating Class can be un-commented and implemented on each control.

Here are the controls.

Put these controls into the forum/controls folder and drag and drop them anywhere on the site. 

TopPosts.zip (1.67 kb)

LatestPosts.zip (1.79 kb)