Skiltz on .NET

My First Facebook Application

2011-10-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been exploring the Facebook Graph and API and was asked to create a Week By Week Pregnancy application for OHbaby!.

It basically does the following
- You enter your babies date of birth (Due date calculator) found here.
- OHbaby! sends you a week by week account of what your baby is up to.

We are using Quartz.net to schedule the job which seems to be working pretty well so far (When we get 1000's of user we'll see how it goes)

So far I am pretty happy with how its going. Posting messages to Facebook seem to be working pretty well thanks to the Facebook C# SDK.

Check out the application at http://apps.facebook.com/pregnancyweekbyweek/ to see the flow.

Jquery Validate Form Submit Before Opening Popup Window

2011-09-11T19:15:00.001-07:00

Sometimes you want to open a form submit in a new window. Think facebook extended permissions popup window. To achieve this you would do something like the following.

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function () {
               if ($('#myform').valid()) {
                window.open('', 'formpopup', 'width=800,height=600,resizeable,scrollbars');
                this.target = 'formpopup';
             });
    });
</script>

However you wouldn’t want to open the popup window unless the form being submitted in valid.

If you are using jquery.validate then its pretty easy to update the above javascript to this:

Hope this helps someone.

Go All Blacks | OHbaby! New Zealand

2011-09-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

Here is a Mosaic I put together for OHbaby! in support of the Allblacks in the upcoming Rugby World Cup 2011.

Go All Blacks | OHbaby! New Zealand

Only allow approved members to Login + Umbraco

2010-04-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

This is how I go about not allowing Umbraco members to login whn they haven't been approved.

In my MemberType I have a True/False datatype called Active.

On my MemberLogin user control page my asp.net member login control looks like


<asp:Login ID="lgMember" OnLoggingIn="Login1_LoggedIn" CssClass="login" VisibleWhenLoggedIn="false" DestinationPageUrl="/Members.aspx"
 LabelStyle-VerticalAlign="middle" LabelStyle-CssClass="LoginLabel"  TextBoxStyle-Width="100px" UserNameLabelText="Login"
PasswordLabelText="Password" TitleText="" DisplayRememberMe="false" runat="server" />

In the codebehind my Login1_LoggedIn event looks like.

protected void Login1_LoggedIn(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            //get member
            Member m = Member.GetMemberByName(((Login)sender).UserName.ToString(), false).First();

            if (m.getProperty("Active").Value.ToString() != "1")
            {
                FormsAuthentication.SignOut();
                HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect(umbraco.library.NiceUrl(1091));
            }
                       
        }

This will redirect the user to a page explaining their membership hasn't been enabled yet.

nopCommerce and Umbraco

2010-04-02T18:35:00.001-07:00

I have two major passions when it comes to .net open source projects and they are Umbraco and nopCommerce. What I am planning on doing is building a nopCommerce package for Umbraco. There are plenty of good commerce packages already for Umbraco and I have nothing against these packages I just love nopCommerce and would like to be able to use it within the Umbraco framework. I don’t think is going to be a quick task and will probably need to be spanned over many months. I’m going to try and blog what I do so other .Net applications might be able to use some of the challenges I encounter and how they might go about resolving them. Please check back here regularly to check on my progress. Will also try and get a package up into codeplex. Wish me luck!

Free nopcommerce installation

2010-03-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

Are you looking for someone to install nopCommerce for you? If you need nopcommerce hosting and join Softsys Hosting then please flick me an email and I'll install if free for you. Softsyshosting is a fantasic hosting company and is a perfect fit for nopCommerce.

skiltz.FontPickerDataType

2010-03-08T01:14:00.000-08:00

Umbraco Hosting

2009-11-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

Almost every other day I get asked where should I host my Umbraco Site? Or I've just joined XXX hosting company and Umbraco doesn't work.

There are loads of guides and tutorials on the net about how to get Umbraco working on your host, normally these guides have common traits such as make sure you have the correct permissions set and check the hosting runs their websites in Full Trust.

If you want to skip all that hassle then I highly recommend softsyshosting I currently host over 10 Umbraco sites with them and their support system has always been awesome (along with their prices).

In New Zealand (where I am from) I highly recommend Net24 (for speed and reliability), I also run a few Umbraco sites here and again there service and systems are pretty good (as long as you don't need weekend support). Net24 runs Plesk so you'll need to search Google for "Plesk and Umbraco installation" and you shouldn't have any issues.

skiltz.nzPost

2009-10-23T01:38:00.000-07:00

Attached is example of what is to come when the nzpost api is realeased for calculating freight costs.

This is a c# .NET solution so you will need to have visual studio 2008 to run it.

Download from http://agentx.info/skiltz.nzpost.zip

Any questions let me know.

c# Example using the nzpost api


     skiltz.nzpost.Package Package = new skiltz.nzpost.Package();
                Package.height = 3;
                Package.length = 3;
                Package.thickness = 3;
                Package.weight = 3;
                Package.Qty = 1;

                //Crete new request to NZPOST RateFinder url
                skiltz.nzpost.Request Request = new skiltz.nzpost.Request("Wellington", "Auckland");

                //Add our shipment package to the request. 
                //Can add as many as you like.
                Request.PackageCollection.Add(Package);

                //Get the response from NZPost
                skiltz.nzpost.Response Response = new skiltz.nzpost.Response();
                Response = Request.GetRate();

                //TO:DO Error Handling.

                //we could loop through each package and spit out whatever we want
                foreach (skiltz.nzpost.Product p in Response.PackageCollection)
                {
                    decimal cost = default(decimal);
                    cost = p.Cost;
                }

                gv1.DataSource = Response.PackageCollection;
                gv1.DataBind();

Result:

vb.net Example


        'Create new package for shipment
        Dim Package As New skiltz.nzpost.Package()
        Package.height = txtHeight.Text
        Package.length = txtLength.Text
        Package.thickness = txtThickness.Text
        Package.weight = txtWeight.Text
        Package.Qty = 1 



        'Crete new request to NZPOST RateFinder url
        Dim Request As New skiltz.nzpost.Request(txtSrc.Text, txtDestination.Text)



        'Add our shipment package to the request. 
        'Can add as many as you like.
        Request.PackageCollection.Add(Package)



        'Get the response from NZPost
        Dim Response As New skiltz.nzpost.Response()
        Response = Request.GetRate()



        'TO:DO Error Handling.



        'we could loop through each package and spit out whatever we want
        For Each p As skiltz.nzpost.Product In Response.PackageCollection
            Dim cost As Decimal
            cost = p.Cost
        Next

If you're looking to implement the nzpost api into your application today and need a developer to make it work please send me an email.

skiltz.DateTimePicker

2009-10-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

This projects wraps Martin Milesich's (http://milesich.com/timepicker/) date time picker an extention to jquery ui components into an Umbraco Datatype.

Both of these controls are licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses.

Installing this package will Install the following items:

- Files insalled/umbraco_client/skiltz.DateTimePicker directory
- .dll file installed to your bin directory called skiltz.DateTimePicker.
- Two datatypes called skiltz.DatePicker and skiltz.DateTimePicker

The datatype has 6 properties which can be set.

showTime | true/false
constrainInput | true/false allow user to input text into textbox
stepMinutes | int 1 to 60
stepHours | int 1 to 24
time24h | true/false
dateFormat | dd/mm/yy (javascript format)

Furthur information about these properties should be looked up at Martin's blog as mentioed above.

-Known bugs:
Having two of these datatypes on one page with showTime property set to true caused the time dialog box not to show. This is because the script tags are being rendered to the Master page multiple times.

Any questions feel free to ask.

Download from: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/skiltzdatetimepicker

Import data into nopCommerce

2009-09-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

skiltz.nopImport
Current Version - Alpha 0.1 *****NOT for Production Systems******

What does skiltz.nopImport do?
skiltz.nopImport will import data from a data source into the nopCommerce database.

What assumptions are made?- Each product has 1 product variant and zero attributes.
- Only products with SKU's that don't exist in nopCommerce will be imported.
- That you have a ProductTypeID that = 1
- That you have a TemplateID that = 4
- That your product images are stored in the database(nop Default) not on the file system.
- That you can remotely connect to your nopCommerce database.
- That your product images are on the file system.
- .net 3.5 framework is installed on PC

What data sources can I Import from?
Currently you can import from Excel or Microsoft Sql Server.

Where can I get help?
Please post all bugs on the nopCommerce forums or email mskilton@gmail.com

Install guide.

Where can I download the installation from?
It can be downloaded from http://skiltzonnet.blogspot.com

Double click on the install file and follow the prompts.

To open the program go to "Program Files"/skiltz/skiltz.nopimport

Steps to complete a import.
Step 1:
Right Mouse Click on NopSqlConnection and click "Update Connection String"
• Type in your server name i.e /home/sqlexpress
• Choose if using Windows Authentication or username and password
• Type in your database name
• Click test connection
• If successful then click ok

Step 2:
Right Mouse Click on Database (under External Data Sources) and click "Add Connection"
• Click "change" on right and choose your data source type (Excel or Sql Server)
• Type in your server name i.e /home/sqlexpress
• Choose if using Windows Authentication or username and password
• Type in your database name
• Click test connection
• If successful then click ok
• Type name of connection
• Click Save

Step 3:
Right mouse click on the connection you made and click "Database Mapping"
• Choose the table you want to import from
• Choose the column that contains your SKU code.
• Match your columns with the columns in nop using the dropdown boxes.
• click save to save you database mapping.

Step 4:
Right mouse click on the connection you made and click "Analyze data" this should some details about the file you are importing and information about nopCommerce.

Step 5:
Right mouse click on the connection you made and click "Import New Products". This should import products. Go to your website and see if it worked.

File can be downloaded from
http://www.agentx.info/setup.msi

Change ValidationGroup on Wizard Buttons

2009-07-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

To change the validation group programatically on the Wizard Control button you can loop through find all buttons and assign the validation group property. See below.


        public void AssignValidationGroup(Control ctrl)
        {
            foreach (Control c in ctrl.Controls)
            {
                string i = c.GetType().ToString();
                if (c.GetType().ToString() == "System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button")
                {
                    ((Button)c).ValidationGroup = "osMemberControlsValidate";
                }
                if (c.Controls.Count > 0)
                {
                    foreach (Control cc in c.Controls)
                    {
                        AssignValidationGroup(cc);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Umbraco Member CanEdit == False?

2009-06-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

How do you deal with this situation? In the members section of Umbraco there is a property called MemberCanEdit which then allows in theory a member to edit or not edit the property.

Each property renders a System.Web.UI.Control from the IDataEdtior interface. With System.Web.UI.Control there is no property which can disable the control as opposed to the System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl which you are normally use to which has the enabled property.

For controls which are infact webcontrols you can cast the control to a System.Web.UI.WebControl.WebControl control and you will then get the benefit of an enabled property. Not sure what do to do if this fails...Show a label instead?


                        if (mt.MemberCanEdit(pt))
                        {
                            _dataFields.Add(dt);
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            try
                            {
                                ((System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl)dt.DataEditor.Editor).Enabled = false;
                            }
                            catch
                            {

                            }
                        }

Member Action Handlers

2009-06-29T20:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you need do stuff with members once you've created, delete, changed something. The code below adds two new action handlers 1 when a member is created and one when a members is saved. In version 4 of Umbraco create a new class project and do something like so:

   1:   public class MemberAction : ApplicationBase

   2:      {

3:

   4:          public MemberAction() {

   5:          Member.New += new Member.NewEventHandler(Member_BeforeSave);

   6:          Member.AfterSave += new Member.SaveEventHandler(Member_Save);

   7:          }

8:

   9:          void Member_BeforeSave(Member sender, NewEventArgs e)

  10:          {

  11:              //do something here

  12:          }

13:

  14:          void Member_Save(Member sender, SaveEventArgs e)

  15:           {

  16:              //do something here

17:

  18:              //get new member details

  19:               Member m = Member.GetMemberFromEmail(sender.Email);

  20:           }

21:

  22:      }

Gravatar Package for Umbraco

2009-06-23T22:05:00.000-07:00

To learn more about Gravatar please visit http://en.gravatar.com/.

This is a very simple asp.net C# user control which will spit out a gravatar image. All gravatar options are included in this package.

You can choose to use a default image if no email is fond (silhouette, blank image etc) or use a generated one from Gravatar (identicon, monsterid, wavatar)

Happy to fix any issues you encounter or download the source and alter.

Thanks,
Matthew

DOWNLOAD SOURCE DOWNLOAD PACKAGE

Umbraco Tip #3

2009-06-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Save time by using post build events

Whenever I am building Umbraco user controls there is a of development time and one way to save some time is to use Visual Studio post build events, this saves time by not having to manually copy over the .dll and ascx files from from user control solution to your umbraco solution.

To Add post build events right mouse click on your project > properties > build events. Click on the Edit- Post-build event button.

Here are what my post build events look like. Remeber if your path inludes spaces you will need to surround you copy statments with ""

copy "$(TargetPath)" "E:\Projects\Test Projects\ApplicationForm\bin"
copy "$(SolutionDir)\ApplicationFormUserControls\*.ascx" "$(SolutionDir)\UserControls\ApplicationFormControls\"

Umbraco Tip #2

2009-06-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

How to redirect to a nodeid.

Response.Redirect(umbraco.library.NiceUrl());

Example: - Redirect to the same page currently on.

Response.Redirect(umbraco.library.NiceUrl( umbraco.presentation.nodeFactory.Node.GetCurrent().Id));

Umbraco Tip #1

2009-06-22T14:41:00.000-07:00

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a daily tips about the Umbraco library and how to use them in your code behind when building Umbraco user controls. This tips are targeted towards beginners of Umbraco user controls.

Tip #1

How to get the current nodeid from code behind?

umbraco.presentation.nodeFactory.Node.GetCurrent().Id

nopCommerce vs dashCommerce?

2009-06-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

Anyone have any thoughts? I have been a big fan of dashCommerce in the past and I have many websites still running dashCommerce with a lot of success, however recently I've become less favourable towards dashCommerce and I'm not exactly sure why. When dashCommerce use to be the CommerceStarterKit there use to be a huge community/help each other out feel to the software and to the community. However dashComemrce now doesn't seem quite this way and with the introduction of having to pay for certain provider I would suggest this has gone a long to making the software seem less from open source. I've just started a new e-commerce store (still in development) and I had a search around for other open source asp.net shopping carts. I stumbled upon nopCommerce (how did I not know about this before!) and all I can say is WOW so far, the architecture seems very similar to dashCommerce there are plenty of free providers and most importantly there seems to be a great feel to the nopCommerce community. I look forward to working with this software and will let you know how it goes. If you have some thoughts on dashCommerce or nopCommerce then I would love to hear them.

Agentx.co.nz

2009-05-03T03:59:00.000-07:00

Finding your next real estate agent in New Zealand just got a whole lot easier with a website I've been working on. Its built using an early version of MVC. To view the website please vist www.agentx.co.nz.

MVC Live Application Take 2

2009-03-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

I've just released my second asp.net mvc application based on mvc 1.0!

Feel free to check it out at http://www.soccer.co.nz, feel free to check it out and let me know your thoughts.

UPDATE: SOCCER.CO.NZ has been sold.

If you want to see the website please visit http://soccer.co.nz.serv6.temphostspace.com

Create a MVC Helper to Display a Microsoft Chart Control

2009-03-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

1. Add a reference to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Chart Controls\Assemblies\System.Web.DataVisualization.dll and C:\Program Files\Microsoft Chart Controls\Assemblies\System.Web.DataVisualization.Design.dll

---Helper Class --

2. using System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting;

3. Add static method.


 public static void Chart(this HtmlHelper helper, string polltitle, List<int> values, List<string> labels, int width, int height, SeriesChartType ChartType, System.Web.UI.Page page)
        {
            System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.Chart Chart1 = new System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.Chart();
            Chart1 = new System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.Chart();
            Chart1.Width = width;
            Chart1.Height = height;
            Chart1.RenderType = RenderType.ImageTag;
            // Populate series data
            Chart1.Series.Add("Default");
            Chart1.ChartAreas.Add("ChartArea1");
            Chart1.Series["Default"].Points.DataBindXY(labels, values);

            // Set Doughnut chart type
            Chart1.Series["Default"].ChartType = ChartType;

            // Set labels style
            Chart1.Series["Default"]["PieLabelStyle"] = "outside";
                                       
            Chart1.Titles.Add(polltitle);
            // Enable 3D
            Chart1.ChartAreas["ChartArea1"].Area3DStyle.Enable3D = true;

            // Disable the Legend
            //Chart1.Legends[0].Enabled = false;


            // Render chart control
            Chart1.Page = page;
            HtmlTextWriter writer = new HtmlTextWriter(page.Response.Output);
           Chart1.RenderControl(writer);


        }

4. In your view page.


 <%Html.Chart(ViewData["charttitle"].ToString(), (List<int>)ViewData["chartvalues"], (List<string>)ViewData["chartlabels"], 400, 400, SeriesChartType.Pie, this); %>

Obvisouly you could go nuts in your helper method and have all kind of different options like enable 3d, show title, color etc etc.

Enjoy.

It's Official I'm addicted to MVC Html Helpers

2009-03-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

If you've been using MVC recently and haven't been using your own HTML helpers then I suggest you do!

I started off using HTML helpers very sparingly probably because I didn't understand them enough, however onced I'd started just "doing it" the more and more HTML Helpers I seem to create, they are easy to develop and makes your HTML view pages so much nicer and cleaner.

On my latest project I've gone absolutely nuts I have so many helpers its not funny (you can never have enough can you?). I've cut some of my HTML pages from a few hundred lines down to about 50 and because my website is so "modula" in design it makes it easy to plug in modules to different pages.

For example we have crap loads of google adsense on the site, we need to have different adsense for different pages so they fit within the allocated space etc. So at the moment we are storing all the adsense code in the database and then just using helpers to pull out the one we need.

And our MVC helper is:

public static string GoogleAdsense(this HtmlHelper helper, int AdsenseID)
{
SoccerDataContext s = new SoccerDataContext();
return s.tbl_settings_adsenses.Single(t => t.tbl_settings_adsense_id == AdsenseID).Description;
}

Probably my favourite helper at the moment is the "header" helper, basically every item on out website sites in a box with a colour header see below of example page with 4 headers.

My helpers then look like this, which I can change the colour with ease, saves have to copy and paste html code form one page to another.



<%=Html.StartHeader("Sponsored Links", "green", "") %>
    <%=Html.GoogleAdsense(0) %>
<%=Html.EndHeader() %>

What are some of your favourite html helpers you have produced?

My First Live Production MVC Application

2009-02-22T19:23:00.000-08:00

I've finally completed (not that a website is ever completed) my first MVC web application using the recently released RC1 ASP.NET MVC project from Microsoft.

If you want to check it out please visit www.erealestate.co.nz.

I absolutely enjoyed the experience, if you look at some of the search URLs you'll notice every page is now is search engine friendly, while this is nothing new it was extremely easy to setup with little fuss.

Having full control over the markup of the html pages was also a nice change, I got learn a lot more about javascript and jquery which previously was very lacking my skills.

I hope there will be a lot more MVC project down the track for me.

Web Service Generator for Databases

2009-02-22T19:19:00.000-08:00

Want to generate web services quickly without having to write code?

Download at the following address.

http://agentx.info/webservicegeneratorsetup.msi

Generating web services can sometimes be sometiems be tedious. I built this little program so I could build web services quickly and easily.

I use the web service to produce graphs using Xcelsius.

Any comments suggestions bugs relating to this software please flick me an email.

Thanks,
Matthew

Telerik RadUpload + IIS 7.0

2008-12-05T12:44:00.000-08:00

If you've tried upgrading from iis6 to iis7 using an old version of Telerik's upload progress control you've probably experienced an internal server 500 error message.

I contacted Telerik to ask what could be done or how to adjust the web.config accordingly, however they replied "The “classic” RadProgressArea does not work in IIS7. Please upgrade to RadUpload for ASP.NET AJAX." Great!

However its actually really simple to get it to work. See below.

Leave

<httpModules>
<add name="RadUploadModule" type="Telerik.WebControls.RadUploadHttpModule, RadUpload.Net2" />
</httpModules>
<httpHandlers>
<add verb="*" path="Telerik.RadUploadProgressHandler.aspx" type="Telerik.WebControls.RadUploadProgressHandler, RadUpload.Net2"></add>
</httpHandlers>

Add the following to the Sytem.WebServer element

<modules>
<add name="RadUploadModule" type="Telerik.WebControls.RadUploadHttpModule, RadUpload.Net2" />
</modules>
<handlers>
<add name="TelerikRadProgress" preCondition="integratedMode" path="Telerik.RadUploadProgressHandler.aspx" verb="*" type="Telerik.WebControls.RadUploadProgressHandler, RadUpload.Net2" />
</handlers>

<validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />

New Zealand Google StreetView Launched!

2008-12-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

Google has after much anticipation launched Google streetview in New Zealand. Lucky for me my front driveway actually looks mown! Who said I spend too much time on my computer :).

My general gist is its looks like the Australian streetview (surprise surprise), zooming in produces imagery which is very low resoltuion which kinda sucks but then you'd have the hassle of preying eyes into peoples windows.

I've also seen a few peoples faces which i presume will be blurred out in the coming weeks.

All in all lets thank Google for bring streeview to New Zealand, its certainly going to be another useful tool for searching real estate in New Zealand.

USPS Shipping Provider for dashCommerce

2008-10-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

Download the install files from here.

===================================
What is the USPS Shipping Provider?
===================================
The USPS Shipping Provider for dashCommerce allows for real time calculation of shipping rates when a user checks out their order. The provider uses the Domestic Rates API (V3). Details of the API can be found here. Currently only domestic (US -> US) calculations are possible, international coming soon.

=============================
How Do I Install The Provider
=============================
In the Zip file you have downloaded there are three files (SKILTZ.DLL, USPSsetup.aspx and uspsconfiguration.ascx).

Copy these files to their appropriate location as specified in structure of the zip files.

Browse to http://yoursite.com/admin/USPSSetup.aspx and press the install button.

****NO existing pages on dashCommerce are modified so the install should be safe use with any pre-existing pages you have modified*********************

===============================
How do I configure the Provider
===============================
By going to "Manage Shipping Providers" is dashCommerce you can setup the provider, you will need to obtain a API from USPS, you can get this from here.

*****Please note the USPS testing server is not configured to allow testing of the Rate V3 API. I requested access to production environment and advised I only needed access to this API and there more than happy to give me access to the production environment (can't say the same for some other postal companies they won't even give me access to their testing system without a valid customerID).

==============================
What if I have problems?
==============================
Please email mskiltonATgmail.com I'm more than happy to help.

==============================
Got anything else cool?
==============================
You can also use the USPS shipping provider to allow for flat rate shipping. There are 3 flat rate configuration options.

- Flat Rate Per Order
- Flat Rate Per Unique Item
- Flat Rate Per Item.

Zero Payment Provider for dashCommerce

2008-10-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

Below are some instructions on how to add a ZeroPaymentProvider to your exsisting dashCommerce installaton. This is still in very early stages and I need some people to test it, recommend changes etc. It currently only works with PayPalStandard but will be added to PayPal Express after some people have provided feedback.

I suggest making all these changes in a TESTING environment first, maybe sure a backup is taken before making any changes.

SNEAK PEAK.

1. Copy ZeroPaymenyProvider.cs to > store > services > Payment Service

This class does basically nothing other than allows to hold a description which we will use after this initial release.

2. Overwrite checkout.aspx.cs, paypalcheckout.aspx, paypalcheckout.aspx.cs and paypalcheck.aspx.designer.cs

With any luck hopefully you haven't made any previous changes to these files. checkout.aspx.cs basically is just adding another line of code and all 3 PayPalChekout file have been extensively modified to allow for the new accordion pane.

3. Copy the 3 ZeroPaymentConfiguration files to Web > Admin > Controls > Configuration > Payment Providers

4.Add these resources to Labels.resx or if made no previsous modification just copy the one over in the zip file

hlZeroPaymentHelp - This will be a description that is displayed to the customer.
lblZeroPayment - Description for Customer:
lblZeroPaymentDescriptionTitle - Zero Payment
pnlZeroPaymentConfiguration - Zero Payment Conifguration
rfvZeroPayment - This field is required.

5. Overwrite Store/ Enumerations.cs with one in zip file. Adds 1 more enumeration

6. Add a single entry to database

INSERT INTO dashCommerce_Store_OrderStatusDescriptor
(OrderStatusId, Name, CreatedBy, ModifiedBy)
VALUES (700,'Pay On Pickup','SYSTEM','SYSTEM')

7. Build Project and Deploy/Publish Website.

8. Login to admin control panel

Go to Configuration > Payment Providers > Manage Payment Providers

Fill in fields:
Name: ZeroPaymentProvider
Description: Whatever you want
Configuration Control Path: ~/admin/controls/configuration/paymentproviders/zeropaymentconfiguration.ascx

Go to Configuration > Payment Providers > Configure Payment Providers

Fill in the appropaite fields. If you only configure 1 provider then the accordion pane "Payment Method" will not be showne when making an order. Therefore if you want to see the accordion pane then make sure you configure both the Zero Payment Provider and the PayPal Standard Provider.

We will need to do something about the names but this just fixed after some testing and feedback has been completed.

The files you need can be downloaded from:
http://www.trading.co.nz/media/482/zeropaymentprovider.zip

Thanks,
Matthew

Paymate Payment Provider for Dash Commerce

2008-09-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

Paymate (http://www.paymate.com) is a popular payment gateway in New Zealand and Australia and therefore have create a Payment Provider for Dash Commerce (http://www.dashcommerce.org)

Paymate is very similar to Pay Pay Express i.e uses HTTP Post to make payments and there for a lot of the code is based off the Pay Pal Standard Payment Provider in some situations we have just added to the file already in Dash Commerce in order to not duplication content. For example the checkout page uses the PayPalCheckOut.aspx page.

You can obviously switch backwards and forwards to which ever payment provider you wish to use, we have not altered the PayPal Standard provider in way in which it will now not work.

Below are some installation instructions, you will also find these then installation zip folder. You will require Visual Studio in order to complete installation.

================================
INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS
================================

1. Copy the 3 files in the paymatestandardconfiguration folder to Web\admin\controls\configuration\paymentproviders and include them in your project

2. Copy the 3 files in the PaymateHandler directory to web\paypal

3. Add a reference in your Web project to PayMateStandardPaymentProvider.dll

4. Add the following resource strings in Labels.resx in the Localization project

pnlPayMateStandardConfiguration
lblPayMateStandardDescriptionTitle
lblUserID
hluserid

5. Change checkout.aspx.cs - Line 124

FROM:
if(paymentService.PaymentServiceSettings.DefaultProvider == "PayPalStandardPaymentProvider") {
Response.Redirect("~/paypalcheckout.aspx", true);
}

TO:

if (paymentService.PaymentServiceSettings.DefaultProvider == "PayPalStandardPaymentProvider" || paymentService.PaymentServiceSettings.DefaultProvider == "PayMateProvider")
{
Response.Redirect("~/paypalcheckout.aspx", true);
}

6. Change the following in paypalcheckout.aspx.cs -

add this at the top of page line 90 or so.
using MettleSystems.dashCommerce.Store.Services.PaymentService;

line 423 and 424 change the following

FROM:

string returnUrl = Utility.GetSiteRoot() + "/paypal/pdthandler.aspx";
string cancelUrl = Utility.GetSiteRoot() + "/paypalcheckout.aspx";

TO:

string returnUrl = "";
string cancelUrl = "";

PaymentService paymentService = new PaymentService();
if (paymentService.PaymentServiceSettings.DefaultProvider == "PayPalStandardPaymentProvider" )
{
returnUrl = Utility.GetSiteRoot() + "/paypal/pdthandler.aspx";
cancelUrl = Utility.GetSiteRoot() + "/paypalcheckout.aspx";
}
else if (paymentService.PaymentServiceSettings.DefaultProvider == "PayMateProvider")
{
returnUrl = Utility.GetSiteRoot() + "/paypal/paymateHandler.aspx";
}

7. Build Project

8. Login to the control panel and go to manage payment providers
-add new provider with the following details

-name: PaymateStandardProvider
-description: A description
-Configuration Control Path: ~/admin/controls/configuration/paymentproviders/PaymateStandardConfiguration.ascx

9. Goto configure Payment provider and fill in the appropriate text boxes.
tick live to use live Url untick to use sandBox url.

10. TEST!

Install Files

My First Facebook Application

2008-06-22T14:42:00.001-07:00

Today I published my first facebook application using the asp.net Facebook Developer Toolkit. You can check out my application here. Basically the application plots all of your friends on a google map, either using their homelocation or current location which is pulled from your friends facebook profile. Have a look and let me know any improvments that could be made. I'm now off to look for a new facebook application idea.

Web Service Code Generator + Help Needed!

2008-06-12T20:57:00.001-07:00

Wanting to return datasets or datatables from webservice to Crystal Xcelsius?? I have the solution.

I am currently looking for some people to test my Web Service code generator, if anyone has a spare 15 minutes you can download it from http://agentx.info/webservicegeneratorsetup.msi

btw I built trading.co.nz in about 30 minutes with Umbraco, including adding a contact form and dynamically generating the top navigation bar. Man I love Umbraco!

UPDATE - DOWNLOAD SETUP FILE FROM
http://agentx.info/webservicegeneratorsetup.msi

Moving from Shared Hosting to a VPS Solutions

2008-04-27T21:47:00.001-07:00

I've finally taken and plunge and moved away from a shared hosting environment to a VPS solution. To be honest I've been thinking about doing this for about the last 4 - 5 months and was really concerned that I didn't have a the skills to a) get the server running and b) keeping it running.

To give you some background on my situation I'm a web developer by trade and was basically paying about $100 a month to run all my 15 websites, I wanted to cut costs and have more control, I was sick of emailing my web hosting company asking for changes to my site, also .net web hosting in New Zealand is very expensive. By going to a VPS I had no choice but to move it to an overseas server, I think there were 2 .net vps solutions in New Zealand when I went looking and the specs went something like so $70 for 384mb ram and 3gb of ram. Obviously running a few website on these specs was going to be very limited. One good thing about hosting in New Zealand, obviously websites load faster and support help desks and generally fantastic, I use to have all my websites with Web Drive and they were really awesome.

So taking all these things into account I finally found a company i wanted to list with, basically they has 1gb ram 10gb for $50US a month which I thought was pretty damn good, I proceeded through the checkout and the next day the VPS was up and running.

I now had to start planning moving all my sites (something I wasn't looking forward to, other than it was a good learning experience), first couple of things I did on the server (windows 2003 sp2) was run any upgrades that Microsoft suggested to be installed on a web server, then needed to install the .net 2.0 framework and the 3.5 run time.

One thing that got me really confused to begin with was to install my own DNS or not, I'm still pretty ignorant on this fact, i decided it was too hard and fortunately the registrar where all my domains are registered allows DNS control so one thing less to worry about, I did NOT install active directory even though I also thought I needed it, however it turned out I didn't either. I also installed Microsoft SQL Server Express, I know this is probably pretty bad practice, but my websites don't get huge amount of traffic and so I thought this should be fine, I didn't want to pay for a SQL Server database as well if it wasn't really needed, if I need this later then so be it but at the moment it should be fine.

The only thing really to think about was email (i thought I would have to install active directory to handle multiple domains), i spent hours and hours playing around withe SMTP server built into IIS and the pop3 service, basically it was just to hard or actually now looking back on it, its not that hard it just doesn't have anywhere near the functionality that I needed. I didn't know what to do with email, at one point in time I considered buying a second linux vps with cpanel to handle the email but again another expense I didn't want to have. Eventually i discovered hMailServer I had no idea this open source windows based email server even existed, its absolutely fab I suggest you install it and have a play, read as much as you can and follow instructions, I now have it on my VPS running about 10 different domain emails, it can check for viruses, spam, can forward email, can SMTP into it, just awesome! So that was email taken care of.

Right so I started with www.erealestate.co.nz and this is pretty much how it went.

-FTP files from existing host to new host (installed filezilla server on VPS as well)
-Backup existing database and restore on new VPS
-Create new website in IIS6
- Change website to 2.0
- Add erealestate.co.nz and www.erealestate.co.nz to host headers
-Create email accounts in hMailServer
-Change a records and mx records at registrar to point to the IP address of my VPS
-Cross Fingers

This worked fine and repeated the process for my other domains. So far all is going well, VPS has been stable and i'm saving money, I guess the website aren't quite as fast as they use to be but that it to be expected as they now hosting outside New Zealand.

One last thing I did was write a script that backuped my SQL database and my websites and FTPed them to me each night, they are then restored on my local PC. In terms of backup this is probably all I need right.

If you are thinking about moving to VPS then it's really not as hard as you think, its great fun remote desktoping into your own server, installing programs, looking at logs, just remeber don't install to many program :) not like me! Good luck with you VPSing.

Mutiple Websites + Umbraco

2008-04-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

In this short tutorial we are going to learn how to run multiple websites on one instance of Umbraco, this is fantastic if you have common features that you want share between many sites.

I've you followed my GST user control samples (Part 1 | Part 2)
then you will know I have an unusual obsession with GST and VAT calculators and this tutorial is not going to be any different.

In my quest for value added tax calculator dominance i registered two domain names GSTcalculator.info and VATcalculator.info (mainly cos they were only .99c) and what I plan to do is run the calculator we developed in the User Control sample on both websites but only running 1 instance of Umbraco.

The first thing we needed to do was obviously point both domain names to our web server, I'll take it for granted you know how to do this.

Next we can either add both websites to an existing IIS website or create a new one in this case I've created a new website in IIS called Umbraco, pointed the "home directory" to my Umbraco installation and added host header in IIS as per screen shot below.

Because we are going to have a GST calculator(New Zealand) and a VAT Calculator (United Kingdom) we are going to want to have different regional settings eg $ instead of £. For this reason we need to make sure we have two languages defined.

Next we'ved added two new content pages, you can call these whatever you want, if you going to be running many websites then obvisouly it makes sense to name these something you are going to remeber, probably the easiest thing thing to do is call them their domain name.

Now we need add new hostnames to each of the pages we've just created - right mouse click and select host names

Enter the corresponding hostname make sure you add the www version as well.

We should all be set now - if you browse to each website you should see a different version (if you added some content to each page).

While writing this tutorial once i added the host names, Umbraco was still showing me the default homepage of another website higher in the tree, I tounched the web.config so the application would restart and this fixed the issue.

Hope you all enjoyed this tutorial!

Creating your first Umbraco User Control - PART 2

2008-04-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

In the previous article of this series we learnt how to create a user control in visual studio, upload it to our Umbraco site and then how to display it on our site.

In part 2 we are going to learn how to pass variables from Umbraco back to our User Control.

If you followed part one then great we are going to use the same source code and modify the bits we need to.

Because the New Zealand econonmy has turned to crap and the government is constantly changing the GST rate we'd like to update the GST rate in Umbraco and not in our source code.

1. Open your Umbraco user control in Visual Studio.

2. Last time we had some code like such


  double GST = 1.125;
           double Result;
           Result = double.Parse(txtAmount.Text) * GST;
           lblResult.Text = Result.ToString("0.00");

This time want to replace this line (double GST = 1.125;) with a dynamic value from Umbraco.

We need create a variable to hold the GST amount eg
private Double gstRate;

3. Next create a public property so we can access it from Umbraco and assign it to the variable we created above. eg


 public Double _gstRate
        {
            get { return gstRate; }
            set { gstRate = value; }
        }

4. Replace double GST = 1.125; with so:


  Double mutipler;
        mutipler = gstRate / 100 + 1;
        Double Result;
        Result = double.Parse(txtAmount.Text) * mutipler;
        lblResult.Text = Result.ToString("0.00");

5. Build the soluion and upload to to your Umbraco Bin directory and move to the Umbraco control panel.

6. Go to your developer --> macros and select the Macro you created last time or if you want you can create a new macro.

7. Select the "browse properties" button

8. The public properties in you usercontrol should be displayed in this page

9. Click the parameter tab at the top of the screen and make sure the type selected is text.

10. Save your macro and return to the content page where you are going to place GST Calculator.

11. Insert the macro and you should see the option to input your GST rate.

12. Publish your page and you should be away laughing

13. To edit the rate you can either delete the macro within the page and reinsert it or view the HTML using the html button on the rich text editor and changing the rate manually in their.

Hope you enjoyed this little tutorial - please make any suggestions of tutortial you would like to see! The GST calculator is running live my umbraco site here

You can download a copy of the Visual Studio 2005 version here

Gridview + Click anywhere on row to Edit + vb.net

2008-03-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

If you want to be able to click anywhere on a gridview row and put it into edit mode then you can use this piece of code on the RowDataBound event:


e.Row.Attributes.Add("onclick", Page.ClientScript.GetPostBackEventReference(DirectCast(sender, System.Web.UI.Control), "Select$" + e.Row.RowIndex.ToString()))

Then on the RowCommand Event:


   If e.CommandName = "Select" Then
            GridView1.EditIndex = e.CommandArgument
End If

You can download a sample Visual Studio 2005 solution here

Update
---------------------------
Getting this error message?

Invalid postback or callback argument. Event validation is enabled using in configuration or <%@ Page EnableEventValidation="true" %> in a page. For security purposes, this feature verifies that arguments to postback or callback events originate from the server control that originally rendered them. If the data is valid and expected, use the ClientScriptManager.RegisterForEventValidation method in order to register the postback or callback data for validation.

If you don't want to set enable event validation to false then you can try the following:

Protected Overloads Overrides Sub Render(ByVal writer As HtmlTextWriter)
For i As Integer = 0 To Me.gv1.Rows.Count - 1
Page.ClientScript.RegisterForEventValidation(Me.gv1.UniqueID, "Select$" & i)
Next
MyBase.Render(writer)
End Sub

Dynamically Adding Items Between ListView Items

2008-03-31T00:04:00.000-07:00

On my new wedding website directory I wanted to add Google adsense between certain listings on each page. This can be achieved in the following manner.


    Protected Sub ListView1_ItemCreated(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.ListViewItemEventArgs) Handles ListView1.ItemCreated
        Dim lblGoogle As New Literal

        If e.Item.ID = "ctrl2" Or e.Item.ID = "ctrl5" Or e.Item.ID = "ctrl7" Then
            lblGoogle.Text = "<script type=""text/javascript""><!--" & vbCrLf & "google_ad_client = ""pub-6774188899700328"";" & vbCrLf & "//300x250, created 11/20/07" & vbCrLf & "google_ad_slot = ""6463796932"";" & vbCrLf & "google_ad_width = 728;" & vbCrLf & "google_ad_height = 90;" & vbCrLf & "//--></script>" & vbCrLf & "<script type=""text/javascript"" src=""http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js""></script>"
            e.Item.Controls.Add(lblGoogle)

        End If
    End Sub

Umbraco turns to YetAnotherForum.NET

2008-03-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

Today Umbraco "upgraded" its forum software to Yetanotherforum.NET this is great for the Umbraco community and will hopefully help the community grow. As you all know I have had a go at installing YAF into umbraco so this brings a happy smile to my face!

Avaliable for ASP.net, VB.net, C#, SQL, Umbraco freelance work

2008-02-18T01:11:00.000-08:00

If you after some web development and am looking for a freelancer please contact my self.

Live Customer Helpdesk for Umbraco

2008-02-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

This week AxoSoft released its chat client software PureChat, well what can I say this piece of sofware is awesome, took less than a few minutes to get up and running in a project and only about double that time in Umbraco. PureChat is free for 1 operator and as an opening special $5 for 5 operators.

To download PureChat go here

Installation into Umbraco.

- Follow Purchat Instruction first and foremost
- In web.config add value "/PureChat/" to umbracoReservedPaths key
- Move PureChatRequestControl.ascx to the Usercontrol Folder
- I also moved the two image files into the PureChat directory so they were out of the way and keeps things nice and tidy, if you do this then you will need to change values in the PureChat config file.
- Create Umbraco Macro for Chat Client and select UserControl (tick use in editor)
- Add Macro to content page.

Done logon to operator side eg http://localhost/purechat/operator/PureChatOperator.aspx

Integrating YetAnotherForum.net into Umbraco

2008-02-06T16:37:00.000-08:00

Tools needed
- Installed Umbraco installation
- Installed YetAnotherForum Application
- Download this (yaf.dll)

How to install YAF
- Download latest release version from www.yetanotherforum.net (Version 1.9.1.6 at time of writing)
- Extract files into any directory
- Rename default.config to web.config
- Configure yafnet.config with connection to MSSQL database you want to use (tables use a yaf_ naming connection so should be any problems using Umbraco database, however I put it on a separate database)
- Create an application through IIS pointing to the directory where YAF is located.
- Run application and run through install.

Integrate YAF into existing Umbraco Installation
- Copy bits from web.config (YAF directory) to Web.config (Umbraco Installation)
- Copy directories and files from yaf directory to umbraco directory (don’t need default.aspx) as you can see this can get a bit messy
- Copy yaf.dll downloaded before into Bin directory.
- Create a new UserControl (forum.ascx)


<%@ Control Language="C#" ClassName="WebUserControl1" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="yaf" Namespace="yaf" Assembly="yaf" %>
<%@ Register TagPrefix="yc" Namespace="yaf.controls" Assembly="yaf" %>
<form id="Form1" runat="server" enctype="multipart/form-data">
 <yaf:forum runat="server" id="forum" />
</form>

- Upload usercontrol to umbraco usercontrol directory
- Create a new Umbraco macro and select the forum.ascx
- Insert into Umbraco template.
- Create a new page called Forum (if you don’t want to call the page Forum you need to download the 1.9.1 YAF source and change the file Classses\UrlBuilder.cs)

Creating your first Umbraco User Control - PART 1

2008-01-31T12:50:00.000-08:00

1. Start a new asp.net web application in Visual Studio. You can name in whatever you like, in this sample project I have called it UmbracoModules. When creating new modules for my umbraco installation I have in the past tended to create 1 project for all the new user controls, not a single instance for each new control.

2. Create a new folder in the solution explorer that explains the name of the control.

3. Add a new Web User Control to the folder you just created

4. Design your .ascx file the same way you normally design a .aspx page, in this example we are going to take 1 input field and the calculate the GST amount, in New Zealand the GST amount is 12.5%


Amount <asp:TextBox ID="txtAmount" runat="server" />
<asp:Button ID="btnSubmit" Text="Submit"  runat="server" /> <br />
<asp:Label ID="lblResult" runat="server" />
5.    Create a click event for the Submit button
    protected void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
           double GST = 1.125;
           double Result;
           Result = double.Parse(txtAmount.Text) * GST;
           lblResult.Text = Result.ToString("0.00"); 
        }

6. Build the project

7. We now need to copy the files we just created to the Umbraco installation either by copy paste or using FTP. Copy the calculator.ascx file to usercontrols directory and the UmbracoModules.dll to the bin directory.

8. Create a new Marco in the Umbraco control panel.

You should see your user control in .net user control drop down list, if you select this, also tick Use in Editor and click save.

9. All left to do is to add the user control to any pages you want it to appear on. Go to the content tab in Umbraco, select the page you want then hit the insert macro button on the nav bar, you should see you macro appear.
10. YOUR DONE!

In part 2 we will see how to pass variables from Umbraco back to your user control.

Adding dynamic text to RDLC in Code Behind + VB.net

2008-01-30T15:08:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you want to display text in report viewer but you need to be able to populate the value from the code behind.

1. Create a parameter in the Report (.rdlc file)

2. Add a texbox to the report – right click properties.
Click on the first tab “General” click the “formula” button.

3. Add code to code behind where you have added the RDLC to the page.


       Dim p As New ReportParameter("getDate", DateTime.Now())
       Me.ReportViewer1.LocalReport.SetParameters(New ReportParameter() {p})
       Me.ReportViewer1.LocalReport.Refresh()

Umbraco + Member Controls + Image Verification

2007-12-09T01:08:00.000-08:00

Adding image verification to the already supplied Umbraco Member Controls is pretty straight forward. Feel free to download the source files here or the complied files here.

Example of outcome

Please remember that the members controls are part of the Umrabco repository so any upgrades could results in the following information being overwritten.

1. Copy the membercontrols.dll into the bin directory of your website.
2. Upload umbRegister.ascx and image.ascx to the usercontrols/umbracoMemberControls/ directory.
3. Create a new macro and assign image.asxc to the .net dropdown
4. Tick use in editor

4. Create a new page called Image-Verification /image-verification.aspx and then add your macro to the page.

5. Cross your fingers and hope for the best :)

Skiltz!

Umbraco + Display Latest Page Updates

2007-12-06T17:17:00.001-08:00

Here is a little code snippet showing how to displayed the latest n updated pages on your Umbraco site. It shows all updated pages in the same tree structure.

First of all create a new XSLT file and create a matching macro. Copy the following code into the XSLT file and save.

Okay i just spent the last 10 minutes trying to figure out how to add an XSLT to Blogger and failed miserably so just get the code here

Go to the Macro you created and create two new parameters called updateCount (number) and showDate(bool). Also in Macro properties click "use in editor" so then you can use the macro in the editor. You should be done, go to the editor and add the macro to any pages you wish.

Umbraco + Bulk Adding New Pages

2007-12-06T01:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I have been working on a new website for a Kennel Club organisation.

Our choice of CMS was Umbraco, i had personally never used Umbraco, but a few hours into the install and everything was going pretty well.

After doing some searches on the Umbraco forums and Google i didn't seem to find any facility to bulk load pages. Its quite possible one already exists and I just haven't found it. Anyway I thought this might be a good idea so I could gain a better understanding of how the Umbraco structure works. By trade I am very junior asp.net(vb.net) programmer, have little knowledge of XML and no previous experience with C#. So there's the disclaimer continue on at your own risk.

Click here to download the files you are going to need.

Bukimport.aspx needs to be saved into your umbraco directory (the same one that has create.aspx in it)
Bulkimport.dll needs to be saved to the BIN folder.
Book1.xls is a example of excel file of your new pages

What the Bulk Import will do:

It will create new nodes for the pages you specify
It can publish your new documents (can be turned off)
You can choose which node the pages will be created into
You can choose the document type

What the Bulk Import won't do (yet)

It will not assign any macro properties to the new document (eg Hide from nav)
It will not add any content to the new document (its all about creating structure at the moment)
It will not restrict your document types (eg if you have a master document type which doesn't allow children nodes then you will still be able to add child pages)

Right given that some interest is shown then if you want these above options implemented please let me know. The content for my Dog Breed pages have not yet been constructed so I have no need to bulk import content.

The screens are very ugly and confusing at the moment but that's not that point at the moment i just need some people to test this!

Obviously at the top of the page is import which you can import a new excel file its put into the same directory as bulkImport.xls hopefully you have rights I probably should change this to usercontrols or something anyhow that's where it is for now.

Controls on the page

Parent node is obviously the parent node of the new page you are going to create, you can also select any node which is higher on the grid (because it will be inserted first and we will therefore then know the Node ID)

The dropdownlist below the Grid allows you to change the parent Nodes for all pages in the grid.

Import obviously imports the new pages. May take some time depending on how many nodes you create. I imported 200 took about 30second from memory. You will be able to tell its done when the new nodes ID's are shown

Good luck and feedback would be good.

Skiltz

RDLC + Page is blank + Vista

2007-11-27T20:11:00.000-08:00

Today I ran into an issue with the report viewer control and the rendering of some RDLC reports. If I ran the application user localhost then the report would render correctly. As soon as I change from it from localhost to my computer name (http://mycomputer/report.aspx) the report control would show but the report itself would render as blank.

After hours of playing around with IIS and searching google the answer was to change the application to use the classic.asp Application pool and also set impersonation to true.

Hope this helps someone out in the future!

Update Web.config + Asp.net VB.net

2007-11-26T13:05:00.000-08:00

Ever needed to update the web.config dynamically?

Make sure you add a reference at the top of the page to

Imports System.Web.Configuration


  Dim value As String = "mskilton@gmail.com"

        Dim config As Configuration = 
 webConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration("~")
        Dim appsetting As AppSettingsSection = 
  config.GetSection("appSettings")

        appsetting.Settings("emailaddress").Value = value

        config.Save()

Have fun updating your web.config programmatically!

Blogger + ASP.net Code

2007-11-24T13:16:00.000-08:00

Okay two posts in one day you guys are pretty lucky. After writing my first post I couldn't seem to get my asp.net code to post correctly. Using this tool http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/
was just the ticket!

Exporting Gridview to Excel - With Checkbox

2007-11-24T12:56:00.000-08:00

I often get the same questions asked of my while working with asp.net. If these examples seem to simplistic then please move along :)

Exporting a gridview to excel is pretty simple, there are plently of examples on the net, however not to many when it comes to only selecting certain rows to export.

an example Gridview and button


<asp:GridView ID="dg_disp" runat="server"  AutoGenerateColumns="False" DataKeyNames="id" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" >
     <Columns>
     <asp:TemplateField><ItemTemplate><asp:CheckBox ID="cbSelect" runat="server" /></ItemTemplate></asp:TemplateField>
     <asp:BoundField DataField="id" />
     <asp:BoundField DataField="member" />
     </Columns>
     </asp:GridView>

<asp:button id="Button1" runat="server" />

---Code Behind---



Private Sub button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles button1.Click

   ' Set the content type to Excel
   Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel"

   'Turn off the view state
   Me.EnableViewState = False

   'Remove the charset from the Content-Type header
   Response.Charset = String.Empty

   Dim myTextWriter As New System.IO.StringWriter()
   Dim myHtmlTextWriter As New System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter(myTextWriter)
   Dim colCount As Integer = dg_disp.Columns.Count
   Dim counter As Integer = 0

'loop through all rows in the gridview
   For Each row As GridViewRow In dg_disp.Rows

       'skip header footers rows etc 
       If row.RowType = DataControlRowType.DataRow Then

           'find the checkbox in the template field
           Dim i As CheckBox = row.FindControl("cbSelect")

           If i.Checked = True Then
               While counter <> colCount

                   'don't output checkbox field change if checkbox is in different place
                   If counter <> 0 Then
                       Response.Write(row.Cells(counter).Text & vbTab)
                   End If
              
counter = counter + 1
               End While
               Response.Write(vbCr)
               counter = 0
           End If
       End If

   Next


   'Write the HTML to the browser
   Response.Write(myTextWriter.ToString())

   'End the response
   Response.End()

End Sub